


Breathing In, Breathing Out

by indigogoblue



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Hurt Keith (Voltron), Hurt/Comfort, Post-Season/Series 06, not season 7 compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2018-10-23
Packaged: 2019-07-02 15:26:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 29,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15799320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indigogoblue/pseuds/indigogoblue
Summary: As the dust settles in the immediate aftermath of season 6, Keith is determined to be a better Black Paladin this time around. This resolve becomes slightly more complicated when he realizes that the fight with Shiro's clone did some damage, and that he might be a little more banged up than he realized.Basically, the hurt/comfort and resolution I needed immediately following season 6.





	1. Chapter 1

As the dust settled in the moments after Allura transferred Shiro’s consciousness into the clone’s body, several things became immediately clear. 

The first thing was that, for better or worse, Keith was once again the Black Paladin. In the preceding chaos, there hadn’t been time to consider how he felt about this role, or even to truly realize he was stepping into it again. The situation had demanded he fill the position and he’d been so worried about Shiro that he hadn’t bothered to think about much else. It still hardly seemed real, as he took in the sight of Shiro lying unconscious in their midst. It was hard to believe that they’d all made it out in one piece. 

Shiro was alive. He was ok — he was really going to be ok. For the moment, that was all that mattered. 

That moment didn’t last for long, however. There were things that needed to be dealt with and now that he was Black Paladin, many of those decisions fell to Keith. Even now, as he looked up from Shiro’s peaceful, resting face, he realized that everyone was looking at him expectantly. Like he somehow had the answers they were waiting for. With a jolt, he realized that he was in charge. 

It was no secret that his last stint as Black Paladin had been less than successful. The paladins were generous, and if asked, he knew they would say something about how he had “learned as he went along” or had “grown into the role.” But Keith knew the truth, which was that he had been a colossal failure. 

This time would be different. It had to be. Everyone was counting on him, and he couldn’t let them down. 

So Keith looked away and stuttered out something about spending the night on the little moon where they’d landed. He didn’t feel right moving on so soon with Shiro still in such a delicate condition, and they needed time to make plans. Krolia nodded and none of the other paladins objected, so Keith felt reasonably confident that he’d made the right call. Everyone fell to the task of setting up a camp for the night and for the first time since everything had happened, Keith had a moment to breathe.

That was when he realized the second thing he hadn’t had time to notice during all the commotion. 

He was bone-tired. He felt fragile, breakable, and transparent as glass. And everything _hurt_.

Things had happened so fast — chasing Shiro halfway across the universe, fighting him, returning to deal with Lotor, entering the quintessence field and rushing to evacuate the Castle of Lions — that he hadn’t once taken a moment to assess his condition. 

Now, it wasn’t so much that he was consciously choosing to stop and take stock of his body. Rather, it was as though his body was slowly quitting on him as if in protest of the punishment it had been put through. 

Breathing had suddenly become an insurmountable task. Every breath he drew was met with a sharp pain in his ribs and no matter how he tried, he couldn’t quite seem to get his lungs inflated far enough. The overall effect left him light-headed, dizzy, and seriously alarmed. 

He didn’t have a mirror, but he knew without even looking that the burn on his face was a mess. The blade in Shiro’s Galra arm had been so hot the wound had cauterized almost instantly, but it was far from healed. It burned like fire and he was afraid to touch it for fear the layers of skin might come peeling away with his hand, leaving bones exposed to the brittle air.

On top of everything else, his entire body felt like one giant purple-and-blue bruise. Every movement ached. His legs wobbled beneath him and threatening to give out with each step. He felt almost like he was made of paper — like one strong gust of wind would knock him right over.

But everyone else was busy setting up camp and as the leader, official or not, he could hardly do any less. Trying to move gently, he staggered over to the black lion and began pulling out supplies. His hands shook and he didn’t dare try to carry more than a few pounds at a time.

It crossed his mind that perhaps he ought to tell someone he was injured. His mom maybe. Or Allura. Maybe even Hunk. But he discarded the idea almost as soon as it occurred. If he told them he was hurt, they’d ask how it had happened and he couldn’t — he _couldn’t_ — tell them about the fight with Shiro. 

Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Coran and Krolia working together to get Shiro into their single working pod. In a day or two when Shiro emerged and was feeling stronger, it would be his choice if he wanted to tell the others what had happened. Keith wouldn’t make that choice for him. 

The merest memory of their fight made him flinch and return his attention to unloading supplies. The way Shiro had looked at him — without even the barest trace of recognition or remorse. The way Keith’s stomach had twisted with fear and panic and sheer _wrongness_ as he’d swung his bayard at Shiro, of all people. The one person he’d never had to be afraid of. 

He swallowed, his mouth suddenly flooded with a bitter taste. Even if had been up to him, Keith wasn’t sure it was something he would ever want to talk about.

It didn't help that everyone was already drained and exhausted. They’d just endured the betrayal of someone they thought was a trusted ally. They’d lost the closest thing they had to a home out here in the cold depths of space. Allura and Coran’s world had been shaken to the core by the existence of other Alteans like Romelle. He couldn’t add his injuries onto their already towering pile of problems.

Besides, he thought as he resolutely plodded from the Black Lion to their new campsite and back again, dragging an armful of blankets, he was probably just tired. Surely once he got a few hours of sleep, he’d feel better. 

The last thing Keith remembered before falling asleep was Shiro’s expression as he tried to kill him. 

* * *

Even before Keith opened his eyes the next morning, his body was hurting. His head pounded, his ribs ached, and his entire body seemed to be pulsing along with his heartbeat. He pressed his face sideways into Wolf’s fur and tried to breathe, carefully letting his ribs expand to the point of pain, and then exhaling. 

Everything came flooding back — the fight, the panic, and the fear and all the rest. His hands curled into fists, clenching into Wolf’s warm fur. Wolf whined, realizing Keith was awake, and turning his head sideways to nuzzle him in the shoulder. Keith felt the puff of breath in his ear before a wet sloppy tongue began licking his neck. 

Keith inhaled sharply to mumble a reprimand — a mistake — and his body exploded in pain. It was so sudden and so intense it took his breath away. He gasped for air, shaking and trembling as he squeezed his eyes shut and tried to be anywhere but there. 

The worst of the wave passed, leaving him aching and shuddering, but slightly more functional. He cautiously uncurled, wincing at every movement, and pushed himself up into a slumped position. 

The team was spread out haphazardly around the fire in various stages of waking and sleeping. Pidge was awake (did she ever sleep?) and staring glumly down at her computer screen while Allura and Romelle conversed nearby and Krolia stood watchfully at the edge of the circle, eyes sweeping the darkness of the nearby forest. 

Allura looked over as Keith gingerly levered himself to his feet. “Keith. I’m so pleased you’re awake. I was hoping we could discuss plans for our voyage to Earth…”

There wasn’t much time to think about his injuries after that. There were plans to be hashed out and a trip to Earth that needed planning. Keith was the leader now and despite his incredulity that he was really the best person to be making decisions for anyone else, he somehow had the final say. 

In the end, Pidge located a nearby planet that seemed like a good choice for re-supplying before they struck out for Earth in earnest. It was about a two-day journey, but it seemed like their best option and frankly, Keith was too exhausted to come up with a better alternative. 

Deciding who would travel in which lion turned out to be an ordeal as well. Hunk, ever the diplomat, ended up being the one to come up with a system that best suited everyone. This left Keith alone with his wolf, which suited him perfectly. No additional passengers meant that he didn’t have to worry about keeping up appearances once they were out in space. 

As they prepared to set out, it again occurred to Keith that perhaps he ought to say something about his injuries. But the crushing pressure of the title “Black Paladin” weighed heavily, so heavily he wasn’t sure how to force the words out. 

The others were depending on him. He had to be strong. He had to be the leader now, especially now that Shiro needed him as well. He couldn’t let them see how he was hurting. 

* * *

Alone in the Black Lion, Keith continued to hold out hope that maybe, somehow, his injuries would begin to fade on their own. Maybe if he simply tried not to move around too much, they would start to heal on their own. 

Unfortunately, the exact opposite seemed to be happening. Over the course of the day, things continued to grow steadily worse. 

The burn on his face was an immediate problem. He didn’t have to be an expert to know that it was becoming infected. He woke the next morning, still in his lion, to the feeling of skin stretched tight across the burn, and an all-consuming need to itch at the angry red mark. Wincing, he delicately prodded at the wound and discovered the burn was raw and stinging to the touch. Moreover, it was swampy with pus and beginning to bubble with blisters. 

He swallowed down his discomfort and fumbled through the first-aid kit in the back of the lion. There didn’t seem to be any kind of anti-burn cream, so he hesitantly dabbed at the burn with a sterile cloth, rinsed it out with some water, and kept flying. 

His ribs also needed attention and he felt carefully along his torso, trying to feel the breaks he knew must be there. 

His only experience with this type of accident had come during his year alone in the desert. He’d been flying his hoverbike through the canyons when he’d taken a reckless turn and been thrown off. His torso had been a mess of bruises for weeks, although he still wasn’t sure whether or not he’d actually broken anything. It had hurt like a bitch, but he couldn’t afford a doctor so he’d settled for wrapping his ribs tightly and lying low until the bruises had faded. 

Keith rummaged through the supplies he had in Black, hissing as every movement jarred his injuries, but found nothing that would be useful for taping his ribs. He wasn’t sure if it was better to keep his armor on or take it off. Neither option seemed ideal. In the end, he just left it on and hoped for the best.

Breathing was getting harder by the moment. His lungs felt like they were trapped in a steel cage that wouldn’t let them expand to their fullest extent. Dimly, Keith wondered if he might suffocate to death in his own chest. He wondered if he would be able to tell it was happening or if he’d simply fall asleep and not wake up.

* * *

By the second day, Lance had cabin fever and everyone knew it. 

“Guys, I’m being serious. If I don’t get out of this lion at least once today, I’m gonna lose my mind.”

“We’ve discussed this, Lance,” Allura said calmly. “Our destination is less than 12 vargas away. We’ll all have plenty of time to stretch our legs once we get there.”

“12 vargas?” Lance groaned. “I can’t wait that long. My legs need to stretch now!”

“Might I suggest walking around the cargo hold?” Krolia suggested evenly. 

“I’ve already done that five times today!” Lance huffed out his breath, sending static crackling through the comms channel. “Guys. Guys. Guyssssss.”

“Argh! I can’t handle this anymore!” That was Pidge, of course. “There’s a moon up ahead with a breathable atmosphere. What do you guys say we take a quick pit stop and let this big baby stretch his legs for half a varga?”

“Yes!” Hunk enthused. “Lunch break!”

Keith gritted his teeth and tried to haul in a deep breath before answering, ignoring the resulting stab in his middle. “Half a varga. Then we’ve gotta get going again.”

“Woo-hoo!” Lance cheered. “Last one on the ground is a free Kaltenecker!” Red shot ahead of the group, blasting towards the small yellow moon in the distance. 

It wasn’t long before they were all touching down on the moon’s rocky surface, dust kicking up in yellow clouds beneath the lions’ jets. From Black's cockpit, Keith watched as everyone tumbled out gratefully, even those who had advocated for continuing on to their destination without a break. 

Keith took a steadying breath, one hand braced against his ribs. He had to join them. Slowly, one muscle at a time, he uncurled his stiff body from where he’d been sitting for hours. Every bruise screamed at him and for a moment, his vision flashed to black. When he could see again, he was panting, one arm curled over his ribs protectively. 

Wolf nosed at his hand, whining in question. Keith twined his fingers through the wolf’s thick fur and tried to ground himself. The team was waiting. He had to get up. 

He lurched to his feet and for a moment, swayed precariously on the balls of his feet. The cockpit blurred before his eyes as he took one step. Then another. Then the world pitched sideways and everything went black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was a little disappointed that neither season 7 nor 6 gave us any real resolution to all the craziness that happened in season 6. Like, Keith got super banged up in that fight? Also, he's got to be super traumatized from having someone with Shiro's face try to kill him? Also, how does he feel about being Black Paladin again?? I really wanted some resolution, so I wrote a fic :)
> 
> Hope you enjoy and stay tuned! Leave a kudos or comment and tell me if you like!!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who has no knowledge of medical procedures or injuries whatsoever, but is having so much fun anyway? (Hint: it's me)

When Keith’s freaky blue wolf first zapped into the middle of their little group, it didn’t occur to Lance that something might be wrong. Everyone was busy stretching their legs and chattering with one another and the only thought Lance had room for was how _good_ it felt to be back on solid ground after over a day of being confined to the Red Lion, and how _good_ it felt to talk to people in person instead of over the comms. Kaltenecker was great, but unfortunately, she wasn’t much of a conversationalist. 

So when the wolf just ‘poofed’ into the middle of the party, Lance’s first reaction was to simply reach out and give him a tentative scratch behind the ears. 

“Hey there, boy,” he said. “Keith didn’t really introduce us earlier. I’m Lance. I’m the fun one.”

To his surprise, the wolf didn’t seem interested in his affection. Instead, he shook Lance’s hand off and yapped sharply. 

“Uh, whoops, are you a girl?” Lance asked. “Sorry. It’s a little hard to tell since, ya know, you’re a giant blue space wolf.” 

The wolf whined, nosing against Lance’s leg with a considerable amount of force. Lance almost stumbled — the wolf was _strong_. Was he asking Lance to play? Did space wolves do that?

“What’s the matter? Why aren’t you pestering Keith, huh?”

It was only then that he looked up and realized that Keith’s shaggy black hair and red armor were nowhere to be seen. He swiveled around and did a quick headcount to be sure. Hunk, Pidge, Allura, Coran, Romelle, Krolia. Shiro out of sight in the pod in the Blue Lion. Keith was the only one missing. 

For a moment, he wondered if Keith had already ditched them. Maybe he’d landed first and headed straight off towards the low hills rising in the distance. Scouting, probably. Or maybe just looking to get rid of them. 

Lance’s frown deepened as the idea reminded him of the unpleasant topic no one had quite been willing to broach yet — Keith’s months’ long disappearing act with the Blades. 

Lance was trying to get over it and be the bigger person — really, he was. And sure, Keith was back now and that was great. But that didn’t change the fact that he’d abandoned them all and if Lance was being honest, the whole chain of events still left a bitter taste in his mouth. His current feelings on the matter ranged from relief to anger to resentment to a confusing cocktail of all three, depending on the moment.

Yet even as he considered the possibility of Keith ditching them so soon after landing, he realized it couldn’t be true. Black had been the last lion to touch down, landing heavily — almost clumsily on the planet’s dusty surface. It would have been impossible for Keith to sneak off undetected. 

A quick glance up at the huge lion told him that the jaws were still shut tight. Keith had to still be inside. 

Was he just being anti-social?

The wolf pushed at him again, whining more insistently this time, and doubt crept into Lance’s mind. 

He thought back to yesterday, before they’d set out. Keith had been short with everyone, speaking only when spoken to, but that was hardly earth-shattering. Keith had never been one for mindless chatter. But then he remembered the way Keith had hunched over his middle as he climbed the ramp to Black’s cockpit. How his face had been marked with that strange red slash that looked awfully like a burn and his eyes had been ringed with shadows. 

Lance’s doubt morphed into something sharper. Something more like fear. 

Forgetting everything else, Lance half-jogged over to where the Black Lion was still standing impassively, jaws clamped shut. He reached out and laid his hand against Black’s enormous muzzle. The wolf was close on his heels.

“Hey, Black? Any chance you could let me in for a minute?”

Whatever Black’s answer was going to be, Lance never got to find out. The world around him dissolved into blackness. Before Lance even had time to panic or scream, it reassembled itself into the interior of Black’s cockpit.

It was, by far, the weirdest thing Lance had ever experienced. Given everything he’d been through as a paladin, he figured that was saying something. 

“Did you just…?” He looked down at the wolf in shock, but the huge animal was already padding across the space towards the pilot’s chair. Lance’s eyes tracked the wolf’s movements towards the chair and the weird shape on the floor and…and…

Every other thought flew out of Lance’s head. 

Keith was crumpled in a heap on the floor next to the chair. For a moment, Lance thought he was dead.

Lance jumped like he’d been electrocuted. “Keith!” 

He rushed forwards, falling to his knees beside Keith. Keith was lying on his stomach; legs sprawled and one arm awkwardly bent beneath him. For a moment Lance’s hands hovered, unsure of where Keith was hurt and not wanting to make it worse. 

Carefully, _carefully_ , he turned Keith over onto his side. Immediately, Keith’s breathing changed, growing raspy and wheezy as though he couldn’t get enough air. Lance panicked and ungracefully tipped him the rest of the way onto his back. This seemed to help, but not nearly enough. His breathing still sounded like it was coming through a rusty, grated straw. 

“Keith?” His voice was too loud in the deathly stillness of the cockpit. “C’mon Keith, this isn’t funny. Wake up.”

No response. Keith’s head lolled to the side, utterly limp.

As gently as he knew how, Lance reached out and pried Keith’s helmet off, unleashing his ridiculous mop of hair. Lance brushed back the long black strands and sucked in a breath as he got his first real look at Keith’s face. 

The burn had turned an angry purplish-red and was sluggishly oozing a thick, viscous fluid. The rest of Keith’s face was mottled with dark black-and-purple bruises, so many that Lance couldn’t begin to fathom how one person’s face could be so bruised. His cheekbones, jaw, and nose were covered in them, and his left eye was so swollen and puffy that Lance doubted he would have been able to see much out of it even if he were awake. 

Fear gripped Lance tightly, making his hands shake and his heart race. If this was what Keith’s face looked like, who knew what kind of damage the rest of his armor was hiding?

How had this happened? How had _any of this_ happened?

Lance was so shocked that he might have sat there for an hour, doing nothing but staring in horror. But Keith’s wolf was still there and he nosed at Lance’s hand again, looking up at him with big strange eyes as though asking Lance to help. Somehow, that shook Lance into action. 

He’d left his own helmet outside, so he reached up with shaking hands and put Keith’s helmet on instead. 

“Guys?”

“Lance!” Pidge’s voice filled the channel. “Where did you go? Don’t tell me you’re hiding in Red to get out of scavenging duties?”

“Not cool, man,” Hunk said teasingly. “You find the food and I’ll cook it, that was our deal.”

“What? No, guys, this is serious!” Keith’s face was deathly pale under all the bruises and burns, his dark lashes stark in contrast. “I’m in the Black Lion. Keith’s hurt.”

A cacophony of voices flooded the comms. “What? How? What happened?”

“I don’t know!” Lance’s voice was an entire octave higher than normal. “His wolf-thingie just zapped me in here and I found him passed out on the floor. It’s really bad, guys. He’s a mess.”

“Don’t move. Don’t do anything,” Krolia said sharply. “I’m coming in now.”

“You can’t,” Lance said. “Black won’t let you in. Hang on, I’m gonna see if the wolf can get us back out.”

“Be careful, Lance,” Allura said. “If Keith is truly injured, you don’t want to make things worse.”

“Right,” Lance muttered under his breath. “We’re just gonna do this nice and easy.” Gently, he slid one arm underneath Keith’s neck and another under his knees. Keith’s breathing skipped, growing more labored, and Lance shifted his arm to prop Keith’s head up better. “We got this, buddy.” 

Keith was lighter than he’d expected, especially given his new height. He hardly weighed anything at all and Lance barely had to strain as he shifted to his knees, and then to his feet. Then the wolf slotted himself neatly up against them and Lance’s knees brushed its thick fur and then the world vanished for a half-second before re-materializing. 

Everyone stumbled back a step as Lance flashed into their midst, the wolf at his side and Keith cradled in his arms. Then Krolia was there, taking Keith from his arms and laying him out on the ground. Everyone was crowding around to get a look at Keith and the wolf was yapping loudly and Lance still couldn’t get his hands to stop shaking.

“Everyone back up!” Krolia said with no small amount of force. Everyone fell back a step, but they didn’t go far. Krolia was ruthlessly methodical and swift, tearing the plates of armor away from Keith and throwing them away as though they were somehow responsible for the mess in front of them. Angrily, she worked his flight-suit down to his waist, laying his torso and chest bare. 

A collective gasp went up from the group as they saw what his armor and suit had been hiding. 

His entire torso was a map of bruising in various stages of red, purple, black, and blue. It was hard to find an inch of bruise-free skin anywhere and what little there was looked far too pale. His chest was rising and falling quickly like his lungs were straining for air, and one side of his torso was horrendously misshapen, as though the ribs that ordinarily supported it had simply crumbled into a powder. 

His right arm was a mess as well, his shoulder and elbow joints bruised and swollen far beyond their ordinary size. 

Lance had dislocated his shoulder once, as a child. He’d been 8 years old, happily climbing a jungle gym until he'd realized he didn’t know how to get down again. He’d ended up falling, catching himself painfully on one arm and dislocating his shoulder in the process. Looking at Keith’s shoulder now, his own shoulder ached in phantom, long-forgotten pains. 

Romelle was the first one to speak, her voice hushed. “What happened to him?”

“I didn’t even notice,” Hunk said quietly. “We were all excited to get going and I just… I just thought he was being quiet. He’s always quiet. I never thought….”

“Whatever happened,” Allura said. “It must have been on the other side of that wormhole. He arrived back in time to help us battle Lotor, but he never told us what happened while he was gone.”

With almost choreographic precision, everyone’s heads turned to look at the Blue Lion where Shiro still lay sleeping in the cryo-pod. Other than Keith himself, Shiro was the only person who might have the answers they were looking for. Which meant that at least for now, the answers would have to wait. 

“It doesn’t matter how it happened,” Krolia said tersely. “We can worry about that later. What kind of medical supplies did we manage to salvage?”

“I’ll go and see,” Coran volunteered. “Romelle? Hunk? Might I have some assistance?” 

Right. Of course Krolia was right. Help Keith first, ask questions later. 

Lance knelt beside Krolia and tried to keep his voice from shaking. “He- I- he was having trouble breathing earlier. His chest, I think.” Stupid, he thought, as soon as he said it. Of course Keith was having problems with his chest. Anyone with eyes could see that. 

But Krolia was nodding and he watched as she carefully felt along Keith’s ribcage, pausing every so often to feel a place again. Keith jerked under her hands at one point and everyone tensed, thinking he was waking up. Nothing happened, however, and he lapsed back into stillness. 

“I count at least three breaks,” Krolia said at last. “Possibly more, but three that are absolutely certain.”

“That explains the breathing problems,” Pidge said. “What about his shoulder? Is it dislocated? Or just sprained?”

“Help me sit him up and I’ll check,” Krolia said. 

Allura and Lance each took one side of Keith, moving together to support him as they prepared to lift his torso into a more upright position. They had just begun to lift him when Keith’s eyes flew open and he hauled in a huge, choking gasp. 

“Keith!” 

Keith’s eyes were wide with panic and his chest heaved as he fought to draw in air — fighting and clearly failing. His body was rigid and trembling in Lance’s hands, every muscle clenched as he struggled for oxygen. 

“Lay him flat!” Lance was yelling the words before he even realized what he was saying. 

Startled, Allura obeyed, gently lowering Keith’s shuddering torso back onto the ground. 

The response was almost immediate. Keith’s chest expanded and he gulped in lungful after lungful of air. The breaths still sounded horrible, but at least he was getting air. For now, that was all that mattered. 

“Wh-what happened?” he wheezed. “What’s going on?”

“Your wolf came and zapped me into the Black Lion, that’s what happened,” Lance said, aware of just how small and scared his voice sounded. “Dude, you were just, like, passed out. On the floor. I thought you were dead. What happened? Why didn’t you say anything?”

Keith’s eyes dropped from Lance’s and for a moment, he said nothing. Then his uninjured shoulder lifted in an awkward, non-committal shrug. 

Krolia brushed Keith’s hair out of his face. “Keith. I need to know where you’re injured.”

Keith coughed. “Uh,” he said. “Ribs. Broken, maybe. My…my face…I think it might be infected.” He tried to move his arm to reach his face and ended up hissing in pain, which turned into a coughing fit that left him gasping and trying to curl onto his side in pain. 

Krolia reached out and laid the back of her hand against Keith’s forehead. “Feverish. What burned you?”

“Dunno,” Keith said listlessly. “Some kind of laser? Not…not really sure.”

It was on the tip of Lance’s tongue to ask him how the hell he was “not really sure”, but Keith looked so exhausted that he held his tongue. 

“Your shoulder looks like it might be dislocated,” Krolia said. “We’re waiting on medical supplies to treat your other injuries, but I should be able to replace your shoulder, if you think you’re up for it.”

Keith didn’t answer. His eyes were half-lidded and his face was twisted in pain and Lance half-expected Krolia to just pop his shoulder back in without even waiting for a reply. But she remained silent, waiting resolutely, and Lance realized with a jolt that she wouldn’t do it without Keith’s permission. He looked down and he saw what he’d failed to notice earlier — Keith gripping Krolia’s hand so tightly that his knuckles were turning white. And she was holding him just as tightly. 

“Didn’t…even notice my shoulder,” Keith said at last. “Ribs…”

“I’ll fix those as soon as I can,” Krolia repeated. “But I can fix your shoulder now. Is that all right?”

Jaw clenched tightly, Keith finally nodded. “Ok,” he whispered. 

“Sit him up straight,” Krolia ordered. “Not slumped, like last time when he couldn’t breathe. He needs to be straight.”

Lance and Allura moved into position behind Keith and levered him up into a sitting position. His breath hitched for a moment before evening out again when he was upright. Krolia moved to brace her hands against his bad shoulder and Pidge took up position gripping Keith’s good hand. Lance didn’t miss the way Keith gripped Pidge’s hand back.

“Keith. Are you ready?”

Keith exhaled forcefully, his whole body wobbling. “Just do it.”

Moving so suddenly and swiftly that Lance didn’t even have time to brace for the impact, Krolia _pushed_ and _twisted_. There was a click and a pop and Keith went rigid before screaming once and passing out into their arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow guys, I'm floored by all the love for the first chapter! Thanks so much! I hope you like this one as well :)


	3. Chapter 3

_Shiro’s face was twisted into a horrible sneer, a mocking facsimile of the smile that was usually so warm and assuring. Keith barely had time to duck before the smirk widened and Shiro’s Galra hand came crashing down. Keith rolled, stumbling and barely managing to right himself in time to block Shiro’s next blow._

_“Please, Shiro! This isn’t you! You have to fight it, Shiro!”_

_His next movement was too slow and Shiro easily knocked the Marmora blade from his grip, sending it clattering away to a platform far below them._

_“Disappointing,” he said, advancing deliberately towards Keith. Keith tried to fall back a step, but there was nowhere left to run. He had reached the edge of the platform; below him was nothing but empty space. He was trapped. “The Keith I remember would have fought harder. He would have been able to save me.”_

_Before Keith could protest or even blink, the glowing blade was back and Shiro was swinging it towards his face. Keith’s hands were empty and there was no way to block it. He threw up his hands in a panic, knowing even as he did that they would offer no protection…_

“Shiro!” Keith surged upwards in a panic, barely noticing the aches and pains that groaned in protest. He had to find Shiro… had to stop him… had to save him… couldn’t… couldn’t let him…. 

“Hey! Hey, hey, hey, Keith, it’s ok. Shiro’s safe. You’re safe. It’s ok!” Someone was gripping him by the shoulders, talking rapidly like he was a wild animal in need of calming.

The dream faded around him and Keith slowly realized that he wasn’t at the cloning facility anymore. He was…he wasn’t sure where he was. It looked like a cave of some kind. Shiro was nowhere to be seen and Pidge was holding him by the shoulders, trying to pull him out of the dream. 

It was all right. They were all safe. He’d won. 

The knowledge didn’t quite reach his heart, which refused to slow to a normal pace. His hands shook and his chest shuddered as he struggled to catch his breath. 

“Pidge,” he said weakly, feeling the ache in his ribs as he tried to pull in enough air to talk. “Where are we? Where is everyone? What’s going on?”

Pidge released his shoulders, gently helping him sit back. “Everyone’s fine. You’re just a little banged up, is all. What do you remember? Do you remember landing?”

He tried to think back through the disjointed memories of the past few days. He remembered flying, and feeling increasingly horrible. He remembered landing…somewhere. His mind blanked at what had happened next, although he had a vague, uncomfortable memory of being stretched out on the ground while everyone looked down at him like a bug under a microscope. 

“… I think so?”

“That was just earlier today," Pidge said helpfully. "We’re still on that same moon. It was getting dark, though, and we couldn’t just hang out in the open all night, especially since we don’t know what kind of wildlife lives around here. Your mom found this cave and we’re camping out here, at least for now.” 

From his awkward position against the cave wall, Keith craned his neck to take in their surroundings. It was a smallish cave, with probably just enough room for the entire party to huddle together if they squeezed in close. At the moment, he and Pidge were the only ones present. On the cave floor between them, a small fire burned, radiating a glowing halo of warmth. 

“Why aren’t we in the lions?” he asked. 

Pidge scowled and shoved her glasses farther up the bridge of her nose. “They’re really low on power. They have enough to make it to the rally point we were headed for, but it’ll be tight. Camping out in the lions means wasting power we can’t afford to lose.” She looked at him critically. “How are you feeling?”

“Where’s everyone else?” Keith asked, blatantly disregarding the question. 

Pidge fixed him with a look that told him she wasn’t fooled. “Coran, Romelle, and Allura are bringing Shiro’s pod here now,” she said. “You know, so we can all keep an eye on both our invalids at once.”

“Not an _invalid_ ,” Keith bit out, hating the way his voice cracked in exhaustion.

“Course not,” Pidge said. “Anyway, your mom and your wolf are out trying to find us some food. Hunk and Lance are doing a perimeter check and I got stuck here on nurse duty.”

“Sorry,” Keith said, the knee-jerk response leaving his mouth almost automatically. 

"I don't really mind," Pidge said. “And stop avoiding my questions. I asked how you’re feeling.”

Keith scowled, still miffed at the way the term “invalid” made him feel like a burden, but reluctantly turned his focus towards the legion of hurts blooming across his body. To his surprise and slight discomfort, someone had undressed him at some point, leaving him in just his flight suit, which had been pulled down to his waist. Most of his body was covered under a blanket, although a quick glance revealed the layers of bandages wrapped around his torso, keeping him from bending in the middle. Likewise, his right arm was immobilized in a sling. 

With his good hand, he reached up hesitantly to touch his face. His probing fingers encountered a thick layer of gauze taped over the burn, preventing him from investigating further. 

Tentatively, he took a deep breath, inflating his lungs to the point where they pressed against his ribs. The warning pain was still there, although the stability of the wrappings prevented him from hurting himself more through accidental movement. Nausea roiled in his gut like a snake and he could feel the fever still burning through his veins, filling his head with cotton balls and dulling his senses. 

“Better,” he said, hoping she’d believe him. The sooner they were off this moon and back on course, the better he’d feel. As it was, the guilt was already creeping in. He was slowing down the mission and de-railing the whole team, just because he’d been clumsy in a fight. He’d made stupid mistakes and now all their plans were being interrupted because of him. “Yeah, I’m…I’m feeling a lot better. I’ll probably be ready to leave by the time everyone gets back.”

“Like hell you will,” Pidge said. “You’re making that face.”

“I am…not making any face,” Keith said, self-consciously trying to smooth out any creases that might be straining his forehead. “This is just how my face looks.”

“Mm, nope. It’s that face you make when you’re hurt but you’re trying to ignore it,” Pidge said. She rummaged around in the back of the cave for a moment and returned, holding her hand cupped in front of her. He watched mutely as she reached out to grab his hand and poured three small blue capsules into it. 

“Altean painkillers, apparently,” Pidge explained, in answer to Keith’s questioning look. “Coran was kind of guessing about the right dosage for you since, you know, no one’s ever tried to medicate a skinny half-human half-Galra before.”

Keith eyed the pills dubiously, hesitant both because of their alien nature and because taking them would mean admitting he was hurting. But his ribs were pulsing with pain and the burn on his face still radiated heat and even his shoulder, which he hadn’t noticed before his mom pointed it out and popped it back into place, was also aching. So he swallowed his pride for the moment and downed the pills, washing them down with a drink from the water pouch Pidge passed him. 

“Thanks.”

Pidge shrugged. “I don’t think they’re really going to fix anything, per se, but hopefully they’ll at least take the edge off the pain.”

Keith nodded, leaning his head back against the cave wall. Pidge retreated to opposite side of the cave, busying her hands with what looked like a tangle of wires to Keith, but that he knew would likely soon become some kind of distress beacon or medical scanner or even — hell, with Pidge, who knew — a new addition to her video-game setup. 

“Look,” Pidge said after a moment, causing Keith’s whole body to tense in anticipation of the many conversations he really _really_ didn’t want to have. “I’m not gonna ask you how any of this happened. I should warn you that everybody else is probably going to ask you, but I won’t. I understand if you don’t want to talk about it.”

She scrunched her eyebrows together, fiddling furiously with the wires and keeping her eyes on them instead of Keith. “What I don’t understand,” she said at last, “is why you didn’t say anything?”

Keith was glad Pidge wasn’t looking at him, as it saved him from having to conjure up an expression appropriate for the moment — whatever that might be. In his head, he cast about for the words that would make her understand. 

“I…didn’t think it was that bad,” he said at last. 

Pidge’s voice was tight, almost angry sounding. “You didn’t think it was that bad.”

“I mean…sure, I was kinda banged up,” Keith allowed carefully. “But so were we all. We all fought Lotor. Everyone was hurting.”

That made Pidge put her work down and stare at him flatly. “Everyone was hurting? Keith, out of all of the rest of us, do you know what the biggest injury was? It was Lance, whose foot was pretty sore from where Kaltenecker stepped on it when she didn’t want to get into the Red Lion. You, on the other hand…” she reached for her datapad, which she swiped at for a moment… “oh yeah, here’s the full list. You have three broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder, a sprained elbow, a burn that takes up half of your face, and too many bruises and lacerations to even mention. We don’t even know what internal injuries we might be dealing with because none of our scanners have power out here. You _had_ to know it was bad.”

Keith's face flooded with heat that had nothing to do with the burn and he awkwardly shrugged his uninjured shoulder. “I didn’t…didn’t want to bother anyone?”

Pidge just stared at him, almost as though she was sizing him up. “Sort of like how you didn’t want to bother anyone about Naxzela?”

Keith’s heart stopped. It felt like the very blood in his veins was suddenly frozen. There was no way….no one knew about that. Did they? “How do you…” he caught himself just in time. “I mean, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Pidge fixed him with a _look_ and opened her mouth to answer him. But then Romelle’s shout echoed through the night and suddenly Coran and Allura and Romelle were entering the cave, bearing Shiro’s pod between them, and whatever Pidge was going to say was lost. 

Keith’s heart gave a peculiar twist at the sight of Shiro, cold and still in the pod. _He_ had done that, he thought, as he stared at Shiro’s stump, still ragged and uneven with bits of wire poking out. This was Shiro, who had loved him and trusted him and believed in him even when the rest of the world believed there was nothing in Keith worth fighting for. And yet…

None of that changed the fact that when Keith closed his eyes, he could still see Shiro leering at him, pushing him backwards off the platform into the void of space. _“I should have abandoned you just like your parents did…”_

“How are you feeling, Keith?”

Keith snapped back to the present with a jolt to find Allura kneeling beside him, one hand rested on his shoulder. 

“Fine,” he said, trying to keep his voice as strong and steady as possible. 

A faint smile appeared on Allura’s face. “Keith, it’s perfectly all right. You’ve suffered some severe injuries and no one expects you to be up and about so soon. Your body needs time to recover.”

“It’s not that bad,” Keith repeated stubbornly. “We should head out once everyone is back. Our trip to Earth will be long enough as it is.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Pidge snapped crossly. She had resumed fiddling with the small piece of hardware. “We’re not going anywhere while you’re hurt.”

“Do you see any healing pods?” Keith snapped. His breaths were coming faster and more painfully, and he hunched in over himself as he spoke. “Any magical healing equipment? Cause I don’t. The only way any of this is going to get better is with time, and that’s exactly what we don’t have. We can’t afford to waste that much time just waiting around. I just…just need to deal with it. It’ll be fine.”

“I can’t help but feel some of this is my fault,” Allura fretted. “If I were at my full strength, I could perhaps speed up your healing process.”

“Don’t,” Keith said, a bit more harshly than perhaps he’d intended. “It’s not your fault. You saved Shiro. That’s more important.”

“Depending on how Shiro’s body is starting to recover, it might be possible -” Coran began, but Keith cut him off. 

“No.”

“It’s certainly not ideal, Number Four, but perhaps it’s worth -”

“No way.” Every bone in Keith’s body could have been broken and he still wouldn’t have wavered. He set his jaw stubbornly and shook his head. “I’m not kicking him out of the pod just so I can use it.”

Everyone looked like they wanted to argue with him on that one, but no one quite dared. Instead, Coran offered him a tube of food goo and despite the fact that Keith was feeling nauseous, he took it in an effort to be at least somewhat accommodating. He swallowed a few mouthfuls before feeling so sick that he had to put it down. 

They lapsed into silence, with the fire crackling and the unfamiliar night sounds echoing from outside the cave. Keith began to feel drowsy and it occurred to him that perhaps the painkiller dosage might have been a bit higher than it should have been. He was just about to drift off to sleep when Lance and Hunk came clattering into the cave. 

“Keith! You’re awake!” Lance plopped dramatically into a seated position. “Has anyone told you yet about how I heroically carried you out of the Black Lion?”

Keith bristled. “No. All I heard was that you let a cow step on your foot.” 

The words were meant to goad Lance and perhaps spark a bit of an argument — anything to get everyone to stop looking at him like he was a broken, delicate thing — but even could Keith could hear the wobble and the pain in his own voice. The last few syllables caught in his throat and he fell into a coughing fit. 

Coughing _hurt_ , the vibrations tearing through his whole body like lightning, threatening to break what few ribs weren’t already damaged. He bent over, gasping and trying to keep himself from breaking in half. 

Hunk was saying something quite close to his ear, but Keith couldn’t be bothered to sort the sounds out into words. “Mm’ fine,” he wheezed, curling in over himself. He caught a glimpse of blood staining his hand as he lowered it from his mouth and hastily wiped it against the ground, hoping no one else had seen.

Allura’s cool hand pressed against his forehead. “Keith, your fever is still quite high. I think perhaps it would be best if you tried to sleep, if you think you can.”

Exhausted, he shook his head as the last of the coughs shuddered out. “Can’t. We should…should get moving. Earth.”

“Earth isn’t going anywhere, Keith,” Hunk said. “Seriously. We’re all right here. We can handle things for a few hours while you get some sleep and your body starts healing.”

Keith wanted to snap back and explain that it wasn’t that simple. He was the Black Paladin now, and that meant he couldn't afford to just take a nap. He was supposed to be in charge. He was supposed to be leading the team and here he was, already failing them again. But talking hurt and even if it hadn't, the words are too hard. It was too hard to explain. 

Besides, sleep was the last thing he wanted at the moment, no matter how much his body demanded it. Shiro’s dark, soulless eyes were going to be waiting for him the moment he closed his eyes. 

But the drugs were working through his system and they were definitely too strong for his human physiology and even though he fought it, it wasn’t long before they were pulling him back under. 

His eyes drifted shut and Shiro was there, waiting for him at the dark facility, and again they fought. The laser seared into his skin, the blows crumbled his bones into a powder, and above it all, the fear and dread pounded through his veins like a river. The dream felt more real than any of the millions of realities Slav claimed existed and as the battle raged around him, Keith fought back the swelling tide of fear of would happen if he lost. At the same time, he was paralyzed with the fear that he might win. And in the smoke and fear and panic and pain, he couldn’t for the life of him figure out which outcome scared him more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Keith needs a hug, some therapy, and some communication skills, guys. Maybe or maybe not in that order.


	4. Chapter 4

Everyone heaved a sigh of relief as Keith’s breathing finally evened out and his body relaxed, signaling that he had finally submitted to the pull of the drugs and fallen asleep.

Cautiously, Hunk reached out and laid his palm across Keith’s forehead. Lance half-expected him to jerk awake and snap at Hunk to back off, but Keith’s face remained slack and he didn’t move so much as a muscle. Definitely asleep. 

“His fever feels, like, scary high,” Hunk said worriedly. “Coran, are those drugs gonna help with that?”

“They might,” Coran said. “But they’ve never been tested on someone with Keith’s unique hybrid physiology before. Besides, the fever itself isn’t the problem. The problem is the infection itself. We simply don’t have the resources to treat it properly out here.”

What they needed was a healing pod, and they all knew it. Lance fidgeted and glanced at their single working pod, conspicuously positioned at the back of the cave. He knew Shiro’s new body was fragile, and the last thing he wanted was to interrupt the healing process. But at the same time…what if Keith really needed it? And on the other hand, what if in trying to save Keith, they accidentally killed Shiro?

Maybe Keith was right, Lance reasoned to himself and they just needed to wait his injuries out. After all, Keith was definitely hurting, but his situation wasn’t _dire_ , right? Maybe they would be fine with a little time. 

That faint hope didn’t change the fact that looking at Keith now was, frankly, jarring. Keith was supposed to be fierce, independent, and utterly unstoppable. To see him like this — slumped against the cave wall, wrapped in bandages and covered in bruises — seemed deeply and fundamentally wrong, almost to the point of turning Lance’s stomach. 

“Listen, there’s no point in all of us sitting up and worrying,” Hunk reasoned at last. “At least a few of us should try to get some sleep. We’ll all feel better after a few hours of rest. Who knows? Maybe even Keith will feel better in the morning.”

Lance nodded doubtfully. Hunk was right, it was possible. But as much as he wanted to believe it, he only had to look at the labored rise and fall of Keith’s chest to feel the doubts creeping in. 

“What an excellent idea, Hunk,” Allura said, her voice sounding a little forced and overly cheerful. “I propose we set up a rotating watch. Perhaps we might all take turns watching for an hour before waking the next person.”

“We might want to make that at least two people,” Pidge said. “Between Shiro, Keith, and the possibility of native hostile species, it seems like a two-person job.”

Lance raised his hand. “I can take one of the first shifts.” Between everything that had happened, his nerves were still a jangled pile of loose ends and if he was being honest with himself, he didn’t think he would be able to get to sleep anytime soon. He might as well do something useful with his wakefulness. 

“I can be the other person,” Pidge said. “I’ve gotta finish this anyway.” She waved the small mess of wires she’d been tinkering with. 

The others readily agreed upon an order of shifts and quickly settled in to sleep. Allura hesitated the longest, her face worried. “You’re sure the two of you will be all right? You will wake us the moment anything changes?”

Lance flashed his best dazzling smile, even though his heart wasn’t in it. “You got it, princess. Me and Pidge have this under control.”

Allura returned his smile faintly and lay down, making herself comfortable and nestling between Romelle and Hunk. Before long, the sound of heavy, even breathing filled the cave, and Lance and Pidge were the only ones left awake. 

Lance brought his knees up and hugged his arms around them. The moon they had landed on was uncomfortably cold and even though he was sitting right next to the fire, he couldn’t quite seem to get warm. Looking at Keith’s troubled breathing was making Lance feel sick, so instead, he watched Pidge, her fingers tugging stubbornly at different wires, her mouth set in determination. 

“Whatcha got there?” he asked. 

Pidge frowned. “It’s _supposed_ to be a medical scanner. It doesn’t have any power right now, but I’m trying to modify the power cells to activate the potential thermal-power protocol that would allow us to bypass the standard crystal-based-”

Lance held up his hand. “You’ve got to know by now that I have no idea what you’re saying. Simple words, Pidge.”

“I’m teaching it to convert thermal energy into power.”

“Neat,” Lance said. 

“Exactly. Once I fix this — _if_ I can fix this — we can get a better idea of what kind of internal injuries Keith might have.”

Lance dragged his eyes back across the cave to Keith. Despite the cold air, Keith was unmistakably sweating. Sweat rolled in drops down his neck, and his hair was plastered messily across his forehead “He looks…really awful.”

“No shit.

Lance swallowed. “I just…I can’t get over the idea of him flying alone in Black for an entire day, looking like that and not telling anyone. Like, what the hell?”

“Apparently, he thought it ‘wasn’t a big deal’,” Pidge said, making exaggerated air-quotes with her fingers. 

“Did he say anything about how it happened?” Lance asked.

Pidge scoffed. “No, of course not. But it doesn’t exactly take a genius to figure it out.”

“What do you mean?” Lance asked. The sick feeling in his stomach was back, swirling through him, threatening to choke him. 

“I mean, think about it,” Pidge said. Her voice was matter-of-fact, but Lance knew her well enough not to miss the faint quiver of emotion. “He went through that wormhole following Shiro. He came back and suddenly Shiro’s unconscious and also beaten to hell. No one wants to say it, or even think it, but really, it’s obvious. The two of them must have fought each other.”

Lance recoiled from her words almost instinctively. If he was being honest, there was a part of him that couldn’t deny his thoughts had already been traveling along those same lines. But it sounded so impossible that his brain refused to fully comprehend the idea. Shiro would never fight any of them, let alone Keith. Never. Not _ever_. 

The lump in Lance’s throat rose grew tighter and he swallowed hard. The evidence was there. The marks on Keith’s body were distinct and unmistakably intentional. Someone had tried to kill him — brutally and repeatedly. But that person couldn’t have been Shiro…could it?

“You saw Shiro before he went rogue and left in that shuttle,” Pidge continued, her voice low and steady. “You saw what he was like. That wasn’t our Shiro. The way he was acting? Who knows what he might have done? What he might have tried to do?”

“We don’t know that,” Lance suggested halfheartedly. “It could have been Haggar. Maybe she was there, and they both fought her. Maybe they got hurt trying to defend each other.”

“Maybe,” Pidge said. But her voice was doubtful. “But Lance…whoever was in that body — it wasn’t Shiro. I don’t know how or why, but we all saw what happened with Allura and the Black Lion. The thing is…it was still Shiro’s body. And Keith would never hurt Shiro.”

Something clicked in Lance’s head and he realized that was the piece he had been missing. Because all this time, he’d been appalled and confused about how on earth Keith could possibly have gotten so hurt. Because no one got the better of Keith in a fight. _No one_. He’d battled druids, aliens, robeasts and everything else space had to throw at them. He’d gone toe-to-toe with Zarkon, for crying out loud. And he’d never come away looking this bad. 

This, here, was the answer. It had to be. Shiro, or someone who looked an awful lot like Shiro, had attacked him. And Keith hadn’t been able to bring himself to fight back, not even to save himself. He’d probably been fighting to subdue rather than to kill, and that had given his opponent all the opportunity he’d needed to wreak havoc on Keith’s body, leaving him in the fragile state he was now. 

Lance felt an unexpected rush of respect for Keith, followed by a wave of determination. He would be better in the future. He would be more supportive. More loyal. Less antagonistic. And he would do whatever it took to make sure that Keith made it out of this in one piece. 

He swallowed and tore his gaze away. He had to think about something else. He needed to talk about something different right now, or else he might go crazy. Or start crying. Or throw up. Or all three. Possibly at the same time. 

“Do you ever think about what Earth’s gonna be like when we get back?” he asked abruptly, sitting up straighter and swiping quickly at his eyes. 

Pidge smiled a little at that. “Only every other minute.”

“No, but seriously,” Lance said. “Think about how much things are gonna change once people know that, like, aliens and stuff are real. It’s gonna change everything.”

“Hopefully, they already know,” Pidge said. “Hopefully, my Dad’s already working with the Garrison to get Earth ready for its very first alien encounter.”

“Yeah,” Lance agreed. “But think about how weird it’s gonna be to see Allura and Coran on Earth. Like, they were freaked out by a cow. Imagine them coming face to face with a platypus.”

“Or a walrus.”

“Trying to figure out football.”

“Being confused by memes.”

“Laughing at our outdated technology.”

The conversation devolved into snickers as Lance and Pidge continued suggesting increasingly mundane things that would undoubtedly baffle the Alteans, and it was almost enough to make Lance forget their current predicament. 

The mood was effectively killed when Krolia entered the cave, the wolf tagging close at her heels. 

_Entered_ was a nice word for it. _Stalked_ was perhaps a more accurate one. 

When she’d left, she’d muttered something about trying to find food. Upon returning, however, she was completely empty-handed, which left Lance to wonder if she’d instead just been off somewhere trying to work out her anger and frustration over the fact that Keith was badly hurt and there was little she could do about it. 

“How is he?” she asked shortly, crossing the cave and kneeling next to him. 

“He was awake for a little bit,” Pidge said. “I got him to take some of those painkillers, and he ate a couple bites of food goo before falling asleep again.”

Krolia felt for Keith's pulse, frowning. The wolf whined and curled up next to Keith, laying his head forlornly across Keith’s legs. 

“How did he seem? When he was awake?”

“Umm…” Pidge glanced at Lance for a moment and he knew she was weighing her options. Be honest and risk Krolia’s wrath, or bend the truth slightly. “He seemed more alert than when we first got him out of the lion. He was talking and he knew where he was. He was definitely still in pain, but he was alert enough to try and hide it.”

Krolia didn’t respond, and Lance watched as she peeled the bandage back from Keith’s cheek. The burn was still an angry purplish color, and the skin was a horrible, peeling, blistering mess that made Lance’s stomach churn just to look at. Moving with a gentle touch that Lance would never have guessed Krolia possessed, she carefully reapplied the dressing she’d concocted earlier and covered it with a fresh bandage. 

Just as she was replacing the bandage, Keith stirred. Everyone froze for a moment and Krolia’s hands hovered. “Keith?”

Keith’s eyes didn’t open, but Lance was close enough to see the way they were darting around restlessly beneath his closed eyelids. His breathing grew harsher and his hands twitched. 

“Keith?” Krolia asked. “Can you hear me?”

Keith’s lips moved, the slightest unintelligible mumble slipping out. His leg twitched and his face twisted into a grimace.

“… _Shiro_ ….” 

The word was quiet, but distinct enough, and Lance knew they’d all heard it. Pidge threw Lance a significant look. 

“Should we…should we wake him up?” Lance asked uncertainly. “If… if he’s having a bad dream?”

Krolia frowned. “He needs to sleep if he wants to recover. I don’t know…”

The furrows in Keith’s forehead deepened, sweat beading along his hairline. “ _Shiro_ ,” The word was louder this time, and filled with an unmistakable agony that reached straight into Lance’s gut. “Shiro, _please_. I…I…please, no…”

Lance had had enough. Sleep or no sleep, there was no way he was just going to sit here and listen to this. Whatever Keith was dreaming about, it had to be awful. He crossed the cave in a second and was shaking Keith’s shoulder. “Keith! Come on, man. Wake up!”

Keith’s eyes continued to dart back and forth, still closed, and Lance shook him harder. “Keith!”

Keith’s eyes flew open, but they stared past Lance, pupils blown wide and fixed on something Lance couldn’t see. “Shiro, stop! I'm not….you can’t….”

“Keith!” Krolia effectively shoved Lance aside, placing one hand on each of Keith’s shoulders and blocking his line of sight. “You’re not there anymore. Wake up.”

Keith blinked, a little dazed, and looked as though he might be waking up. He opened his mouth, but the only thing that came out was a horrible, ragged cough. His body shook from the impact, tearing a pain-filled groan from his lips. Lance reached out a hand to try to hold him still, only to have a half-delirious Keith violently rip his shoulder away from Lance’s grip with a cry.

Lance hadn’t noticed what was going on in the cave behind him, but between the shouting and coughing, the rest of the team had woken up and was watching anxiously, desperate to help but unsure of how to do it. Lance watched in horror as Keith’s coughing devolved into gagging, and blood began to speckle Keith’s teeth and stain the corners of his lips. 

Krolia didn’t miss it, either. “He’s bleeding internally,” she said harshly. “We need to get him into the pod.”

“But Shiro-” Hunk began.

Pidge was already scrambling across the cave and punching away at the pod’s readout screen. “He’s…it might be ok. His body is still healing, but he _should_ be stable enough that the worst is past and he can keep healing on his own. At least, I think?”

Everyone looked at one another, as if waiting for someone to tell them the right answer. Lance realized with a jolt that they were looking for Shiro. Failing that, they were looking for Keith. But neither of them were in any shape to be giving orders, and Krolia looked as though she was about to tear Shiro out of the pod herself unless someone said something first. 

“Do it,” Lance said. “Let’s pull him out and get Keith in there.”

It was the permission everyone had been waiting for. Pidge started typing the sequence into the pod, her fingers flying across the screen. Coran and Allura were there the moment the glass vanished to lift Shiro's unconscious body out, ice crystals still frozen in his hair, and lay him down in the space Hunk had just cleared. Romelle and Krolia worked together to lever Keith upright, still coughing and semi-conscious, before maneuvering him across the cave and towards the pod. 

“Right,” Pidge said, once Keith was laid into the open pod. “Just gotta re-set the cycle and….” She finished typing and they all stepped back, waiting for the glass to descend and frost over. 

Except this time, nothing happened. 

“Pidge?” Lance asked. “What’s going on?”

“I…don’t know,” Pidge said. “Maybe I entered it wrong.” She tried again, her expression growing increasingly frantic. Again, the pod remained cold, dark, and silent. Not one of the lights flickered on. With the pod deactivated like that, Lance tried not to think about how much Keith looked like he was lying in an open coffin. 

“Let me try that, Number Five,” Coran said. He tried the sequence as well, to no avail. 

A horrible feeling grew in Lance’s stomach. 

“What’s happening?” Krolia snapped. “Why isn’t it working?”

Pidge turned to face them miserably. She pulled off her glasses and rubbed at her eyes tiredly. “I think…it was running low on power. Just like everything else. It was working for Shiro, and we were able to shut it down to get him out. But I just don’t think it has enough energy to power itself back up again.”

Fear catapulted Lance’s heart into his throat. He could barely even manage to get the words out. “So you’re saying…”

Pidge nodded. “There just isn’t enough power. The pod isn’t going to work.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't you hate when your technology craps out at JUST the wrong moment??? 
> 
> Thanks so much for all the kudos and comments, guys! Hearing from you all makes my day!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just wanted to throw a quick head-up out there...if blood bothers you, you might want to tread a little carefully here. Shoot me a comment if you'd rather skip this chapter and want a recap!

Keith was dimly aware of the commotion around him. He knew, for instance, that there were far too many voices babbling around him, their tones increasingly loud and distressed. He knew that there were hands tugging at him and that for a moment, he was weightless, before he felt himself being laid down on the hard cave floor. He knew that the air around him was cold, and yet somehow his body felt like it was on fire. 

All of these things paled in comparison to the overwhelming sensation of drowning in his own blood. 

Every sense he had was tinged in blood. He could hear it pulsing weakly in his ears, feel it staining his chin, see it every time he closed his eyes, smell the iron tang of it every time he took a breath, and taste it as it bubbled relentlessly up the back of his throat. 

No matter how he heaved and gasped, he couldn’t get hold of a deep enough breath. His lungs couldn’t expand far enough and they felt heavy and weighted down with fluid. The blood was filling his lungs, it felt like, crawling up his throat, and coating it with a heavy, dizzying slipperiness. The metallic tang was overpowering and he couldn’t keep from gagging on it, trying desperately to heave it all up out of his mouth. 

The voices grew louder in his ear and hands reached out, pulling him into a seated position. The hands helped him lean forward, pressing firmly against his chest to keep him from falling on his face. Another hand massaging his back as he convulsed, choking and vomiting up long strings of blood and saliva. Dimly, he registered that someone else was holding his hair back. It sounded a bit like someone else was throwing up, too, although it could have just been himself he was hearing. It was hard to think of anything beyond how much the heaving hurt his ribs.

Finally, after what felt like ages, there was nothing more to come up. His last few heaves were dry, nothing but bile and stomach acid. He coughed weakly, miserably, wanting nothing more than to sleep, possibly for the next 18 years, and wake up to realize that this had all been nothing but a horrible dream. 

“…doing well. Do you think you’ve got it all up, at least for now?”

It was his mom, supporting almost his entire weight and holding him as he shook like a leaf. He nodded weakly, too drained to even try to summon words of protest. Ever so gently, she helped him lean back. His hair flopped limply down into his face and he realized Allura was on his other side, and she was the one who had been holding it. The others were clustered around, their faces marred with worry. Hunk was the only one not present, reminding Keith of the barfing he’d heard earlier. He felt a dull flash of guilt. 

“Sorry,” he croaked, to no one in particular. 

“Hush,” Allura said softly. “You’ve nothing to be sorry for.”

Eyes watering, Keith tried to search the faces of his friends for any possible signs of annoyance or frustration. His vision swam with tears of strain, and as he blinked furiously to clear his vision, his eyes snagged on one thing. 

Shiro’s face.

_“That’s the Keith I remember….”_

Keith jolted like he’d been electrified. He jerked out of Allura and Krolia’s grasp, acting purely on instinct, and would have tried to rise to his feet if hands hadn’t reached out to forcibly hold him down. 

_Burning pain. Fear, panic, confusion, desperation. Run, evade, roll, block. A cruel smile. Don’t hurt him, don’t hurt him, don’t…._

“What’s wrong with him?”

“Keith, you need to calm down!”

“Snap out of it, Keith.”

_Worthless. Broken._

And his mom's voice, cutting into the memories.

“You’re not there anymore.”

He returned to himself by degrees and, breath by shaky breath, remembered that the fight at the facility was days ago. Shiro wasn’t attacking him. His hair was stark-white, proving that they were, in fact, in the present, and his face was slack in sleep, lying across the cave from Keith. 

Still trembling like he might break into a thousand pieces, Keith curled his fingers into the dirt of the cave floor and tried to ground himself. 

“That’s it,” Allura encouraged, while Krolia kept her hand wrapped protectively around his arm. “Breathe, Keith. You’re safe. Shiro’s safe. We’re all safe.”

 _“Shiro,”_ Keith ground out, still tasting blood. “Why….why isn’t….in the pod?”

Lance and Pidge happened to be in Keith’s field of vision as he spoke, and he watched as they glanced at one another guiltily. 

“We…” Pidge bit her lip. “Keith, you’re hurt really bad. Shiro was looking a lot better, so we took him out of the pod to put you in. Only, it stopped working. It just doesn’t have enough power.”

“Is he all right?” Keith wheezed. He had to know. He couldn’t — _couldn’t_ — lose Shiro. Not again. Not after all this. 

“He’s fine, Keith.” Lance, this time. “He’s probably gonna sleep a little while longer, but he’s fine. Honestly, he’s a lot better off than you right now.”

Keith relaxed a little, at that. If Shiro was all right, then that was the important thing. The team was safe, and every lion still had a paladin. It didn’t matter, in the grand scheme of the universe, if Keith died. Especially if he had died saving Shiro. Keith could live with that. 

Allura’s hand appeared in his field of vision, holding a water pouch and lifting it to his lips. He drank, and the water helped to dispel some of the metallic blood taste from his throat. He managed to empty the entire pouch without choking on it and even felt marginally better afterward.

Through no conscious decision of his own, he found himself listing sideways into Krolia’s shoulder. She responded by shifting her grip so that her free hand could still rub his back. The circles she massaged made breathing a little easier, although perhaps that was only his imagination.

“Keith,” Allura said, hesitant and careful. “We need to know how this happened. I understand if you don’t want to discuss it, but it may help us understand more about your injuries. If we know how they happened, that is.”

Keith hung his head. She was right; he didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t even want to think about it. With horrible clarity, he remembered the precise moment he’d made the choice to swing his bayard, slicing clean through Shiro’s prosthetic. His stomach churned at the memory, and he choked back the urge to vomit again. 

“Was…was it Shiro?” Lance asked quietly. 

_“No.”_ The word was out before Keith could stop it. Because he _didn’t_ want to talk about it, but left to their own devices, they were clearly starting to jump to their own conclusions. And he would rather deal with all the painful conversations in the world than let them assume Shiro was a murderer. “It wasn’t Shiro. Not…not really. He wasn’t…he couldn’t…I tried to save him. He couldn't help it.”

There was a moment of silence as everyone processed this new information.

“And your chest?” Coran prompted. “What happened to your ribs, Number Four?”

“Not sure,” Keith admitted wearily. 

“What do you mean, you’re not-” Lance started indignantly.

“I _mean_ ,” Keith ground out. “Not sure…which….might have been a fall. Might have been…hitting a beam. Can’t…be sure.” There had been too many moments of impact to count, all of them brutal and painful. Any one of them could have caused the damage. Probably all of them had, working together to tear his insides apart and turn them into something that was trying to destroy him from the inside out. 

“Pidge.” Krolia’s voice was outwardly calm, and anyone who hadn’t spent two years on a space whale with her might have easily missed the tension in it. “Is that scanner ready?”

Pidge grabbed something from behind her, and Keith saw it was the wires she had been messing with earlier, now semi-connected to what looked like a disassembled medical scanner. “Maybe,” she said, mouth twisted to the side in consideration. “I can’t guarantee how long it’ll work, but it might hold up long enough for us to get a reading.”

Keith let his eyes slide shut as the others discussed the technical particulars. He was tired — so tired. He was just weak and just miserable enough that he could admit to himself how good it felt to go utterly limp on his mother’s shoulder, even for a moment. He needed to rest…a few more minutes, maybe…then he’d get up and they’d head for Earth. He just needed a minute…

His mother’s hand brushed his over-long bangs back from his eyes, startling him into realizing he’d dozed off. “Keith. I need you to sit back for a moment. Pidge is going to try to get a scan of your injuries.”

Keith pried his tired eyelids open and watched listlessly as Pidge let the scanner hover over his torso, up and down, creating a map of the destruction that was no doubt currently wreaking havoc on his innards. 

“Got it,” she said after a moment. “Let’s take a look.”

The others crowded around to peer at the image on the scanner, and Keith looked away, embarrassed by the shock and horror on their faces. The barest snatches of their whispered conversation reached his ears… “Inflammation…hemorrhaging…completely broken…way too much blood…” 

The mention of blood was well-timed, as Keith could feel more of it bubbling up his throat. He choked, trying to turn his head to the side fast enough to avoid spitting blood on Krolia. She caught him as he lurched away, just as the first mouthful came up. From there, the laborious and painful process repeated itself as Krolia helped him lean forward and patiently rubbing his back while he vomited up blood. 

By the time it was finished, he felt utterly drained, like a washcloth that had been wrung out and left to stiffen and dry. How much more blood could there possibly be to come up? How much more before it was too much?

“We need a plan,” Krolia said tersely, leaning him back against her shoulder as the tide of blood finally slowed. “We need to get him someplace with real medical equipment.” She didn’t say, ‘or he might not make it’, and Keith knew that that was probably for his sake. She needn’t have bothered, he thought dully. At this point, he knew it was bad. There hardly seemed a point in trying to pretend otherwise, even to himself.

“That’s just the problem,” Pidge said, frowning. “We only have enough power to get the lions to that planet we were going to supply at. But they're nowhere near advanced enough to have healing tech. I doubt they even have decent surgical facilities.”

“Right, but there’s gotta be something else nearby,” Hunk said, finally having rejoined the conversation, looking slightly green. “Right?”

Coran opened a datapad, pulling up what Keith imagined must be a starchart. “Let’s see…Planet Sculria…no, that’ll never do. Planet Andural would definitely have the supplies we need, but I just don’t think we could reach that far.”

“What about this one?” Lance pointed. 

Coran scratched his head. “Planet Plagia? Well, it would certainly fit the bill. There’s a rebel outpost there, as you can see. Unfortunately, it’s well outside of our radius. I just don’t see how we could reach it with our current fuel limitations.”

“We have to,” Krolia said firmly. “We don’t have a choice. There must be a way.”

“I understand your concern, Krolia,” Allura tried tactfully, “but I simply don’t see how-”

“Hang on!” Pidge sprang to her feet, elated. “You're right, we can’t make it!”

Romelle raised a questioning finger. “I don’t understand. That’s good news?”

“It’s great news!” Pidge crowed. “ _We_ can’t make it. But _we_ don’t have to. Technically, only one lion has to make it. What if we transferred the remaining power from four of the lions into just one lion? That one would definitely be able to reach Plagia.”

That was enough to wake Keith out of his exhaustion-induced stupor. He shook his head stubbornly and spoke with all the force he could muster. _“No.”_

Everyone looked at him like they'd forgotten he was awake and listening. 

“What?” Hunk asked. “Dude, that’s a great plan. We’d be able to get you the help you need. Why would you say no?”

Keith shook his head wearily. “Too…” cough …“too dangerous.”

“Listen, hotshot,” Lance began angrily. “We might not be ninjas like you, but we’re all perfectly capable of protecting ourselves. Right now, you need to deal with the fact that we’ve got to protect your sorry ass for a change. Just let us help, man.”

Still, Keith shook his head. “You’ll be split up,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. “What if….what if the Galra attack? One lion…it’s not enough.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Pidge said stubbornly. “We’d figure it out. We’d outrun them. With one lion, we’d be fast enough.”

“Keith.” His mom. “You’re hurt. Badly. You’re not going to get better unless you let us help you. Do you understand?”

Against his will, the tears rose to his eyes again. He couldn’t help it. He was _so_ tired, and it was _so_ hard to breathe and everything just _hurt_. “…don’t want…anyone else to get hurt…because of me…” he whispered. 

“They won’t.” Lance was standing now, a look of determination on his face. “No one is going to get hurt. Because I’ll do it. I'll get us there. Red’s the fastest lion — way faster than anything the Galra have. Even if they find us, they won’t be able to catch us. It’s the best plan and you know it, Keith.”

And oh, Keith wavered. Because he didn’t want to die, not really. He’d accept it, if it was necessary, but he didn’t wish for it. And he knew Red’s speed, perhaps better than anyone, and he knew that if there was any ship in the universe that could make this run, it was Red. Lance was a good pilot, too, better than anyone gave him credit for. He could do it.

But the thought of separating the team. Of putting people at risk. All for him. All when he was supposed to be the strong one. The one leading them. It was too much. 

“Keith.” Hunk’s voice, cutting through the confusion and the raging debate in his own head. “We’re a team, man. Let us help you. Like you’d help any of us.”

The logic of Hunk's reasoning caught Keith by surprise. Because of course, Hunk was right. If any of the other team members were in his place, Keith wouldn't even wait for permission. In all likelihood, he probably would have already left. Somewhere, Keith felt, there was a second part to that thought, but his brain was too exhausted to tease it out. However, that didn't stop him from feeling suddenly exposed, like a fundamental part of his argument had been undermined, only he couldn't quite work out what that part was.

"Let us help," Hunk repeated, his voice overflowing with sincerity.

And so, despite the feeling that everything about the situation seemed wrong and backwards, Keith breathed in the deepest breath he could. Breathed it out, coughing on little on the exhale. And nodded.

"Okay."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I know this is only the first fic I've written on this account, but I've got so many more I'm planning and I'm so pumped for this!! Because of that, I'm thinking of making a tumblr sideblog for my writing projects, where I could take prompts and stuff like that, but I'm not sure. Have any of you guys done that, and do you maybe have any words of wisdom/advice?
> 
> As always, thanks for reading!! You guys are the best!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no idea what I'm talking about, guys, don't try sketchy medical procedures at home.
> 
> Also, so many of you guys are subscribed to this story and I just??? Can't believe it? Thanks so much for all the love! I'm so glad you guys are liking it!

Immediately after it was decided that Lance and Red would race Keith to the nearest rebel outpost, there was another question that needed to be decided. As he had been the one to volunteer for this mission, Lance felt it was his job to ask it. 

“Who’s coming with us?” 

If he was being completely honest, a part of him wanted to hustle the others outside and hold this conversation in hurried whispers, well outside of Keith’s earshot. Their friend was hurt enough as it is. He didn’t need this additional logistical worry added to his plate. 

Another part of him balked at that idea. After all, Keith had been opposed to this plan in the first place — and still was, really — but he was willing to put aside his pride, or fear, or whatever, to let them help him. Lance couldn’t help but feel like he owed it to Keith to include him in the conversation. 

He was the Black Paladin, after all. Injured or not, that didn’t change. 

Keith was still weak and pale, but he’d downed another few swallows of water and pushed himself a little more upright. “Don’t want to make either group too small,” he said, coughing a little. “Stick together.”

“Right,” Lance agreed. “But we definitely need at least one other person with us. Someone to keep an eye on you while I fly.”

Keith’s expression soured at that, but he didn’t try to argue. 

“Has anyone stopped to think about Shiro?” Allura asked. “As long as you’re already flying a mission to the rebels, you ought to take Shiro with you. His body is nearly healed, but it wouldn’t hurt to get him to a medical facility as well.”

“Which means you’ll probably want at least two additional passengers in Red,” Coran said. "That way you can take turns sleeping, as well."

“I’m going,” Krolia said firmly. Her mouth was set and her hand never wavered in the smooth, steady circles it was rubbing into Keith’s back. “I’m not leaving Keith.” 

The rest of them exchanged a series of quick glances, but no one seemed quite willing to dispute that and, really, Lance couldn’t think of a decent reason. It was touching, honestly. And more than a little weird. He was used to seeing Keith as a solo act. The idea of him with a protective mother was a little difficult to wrap his head around. 

“Ok,” Lance said, after a moment. “Krolia’s coming. Who else?”

“I believe it might be best if I remained here,” Allura said. “With a bit more rest, I might be able to do more to recharge the remaining lions. At the very least, I can try.”

“I mean, I’m not a magical-alien-alchemist, or anything,” Hunk said with a shrug. “But the lions are at least part machine. I might be able to help out, too.”

“As could I,” Coran said. “Between the three of us, we may yet get them up and running.”

Romelle looked worriedly from one face to another. “I want to help,” she said. “But I’m not sure where I’d be most useful.”

“We could certainly use your help here,” Allura said kindly. “I know you don’t have much experience with the lions, but there’ll be plenty to do. And as Keith says, it’s best to keep either group of a fairly equal size.”

“Which leaves me to play nurse again,” Pidge said. “Nice.”

Lance scoffed. “Who said anything about being a nurse? You’re the one who’s gonna have to figure out a solution if we don’t end up making it on the fuel we’ve got. Or if we end up needing to hail the planet from way too far away. Or something else crazy, because that's just how our lives are these days.”

“Right, obviously,” Pidge said, adjusting her glasses. “But, still. Nurse.”

Keith lifted his head wearily to send her a glare, but there was no real venom in it. In fact, Lance has the idea that it might even have been Keith’s way of trying to communicate his gratitude without actually having to say the words. 

With that settled, their little camp devolved into a noisy flurry of activity as they set about transferring medical supplies into Red, along with the power from the rest of the lions. Everyone pitched in, swapping out in shifts to keep an eye on Keith and Shiro while the rest of them worked. Keith muttered something about getting up to help them, which had everyone in a panic until Krolia looked him dead in the eye and hissed, “Don’t. Move.” Keith deflated, somewhat, at that, and everyone was able to relax. 

Technically, it was still night, if it even counted as nighttime when they were in deep space on a tiny, nameless moon. Loading Red was hot, sweaty work despite the chilly air, and Lance’s hair was soon plastered to his forehead with sweat, his flight suit clinging uncomfortably and itching at the neck. 

They were rewarded, however, when the power transfer was complete and the Red Lion finally roared to life. It rose to its feet, and Lance could almost feel it bristling, ready for action. He remembered the close bond Keith and Red shared, and wondered if even now, Red was willing to throw caution to the wind when it came to saving his former paladin. He hoped so. 

On impulse, Lance reached out and patted Red’s massive claws. “We’ll save him,” he said. “Don’t worry.”

Keith was still awake when they returned to the cave. His eyes were rimmed with red from the strain of coughing, his skin was dull and waxy, and his entire body seemed to be trembling. But he met Lance’s eyes and nodded with as much determination as Lance had come to expect from him. 

Lance swallowed, hard. Nothing about this trip would be pleasant for Keith. “You ready to get going?”

Keith coughed, dragging the back of his hand across his mouth shakily. “Yeah.”

Krolia moved to her knees and began positioning her arms to lift Keith before he stopped her. 

“No.”

“Keith, come on, man,” Lance said, a little exasperated. “We don’t have time for you to be dramatic, ok? We gotta get going.”

“No, I…” Keith had to stop for a few breaths between words. “Wanna walk.”

Lance almost rolled his eyes. Started to, in fact. Then it occurred to him that, despite his outward appearance of irritation and anger, Keith was probably terrified. His body was utterly betraying him, falling apart from the inside out. Keith probably thought he was dying, a fact which might not actually be too far from the truth. 

Maybe he wanted to walk to convince himself it wasn’t that bad. Maybe he just was scared that if he didn’t walk this time, he’d never walk again. 

Either way, his jaw was set and determined, and Lance didn’t have the heart to bulldoze over that determination. 

“I mean,” he said lamely, instead. “It’s not gonna feel great.”

Keith reached out a hand to Lance. “Then let’s get it over with.”

Krolia got on one side of Keith and Lance got on the other and together, they hauled him to his feet. Keith’s hand gripped Lance’s arm so tightly it hurt, and his breath came in uneven, shaky gasps, but he remained on his feet. 

“Come on, Mullet,” Lance said. “Red’s waiting for us.”

It was a little like the universe’s worst six-legged race as Lance and Krolia did their best to support Keith, who stumbled along, slung awkwardly between them. Lance held onto him for dear life and tried his hardest to match Krolia’s pace as they wobbled out of the cave and back down the hill towards the lions. 

By the time they reached the lions, Keith was barely supporting any of his own weight and they had to half-drag him up Red’s jaw-ramp. 

“Almost…there,” Lance said, panting and practically carrying Keith, whose legs gave out on the last several steps. “Come on, come on, come one.”

The lions all had beds in the back, a fact Lance hadn’t learned until the previous night when they’d been obligated to spend the night there. It wasn’t the most comfortable bed he'd had ever slept on, but now, as he deposited Keith’s shaking body onto it, he imagined he had never been more grateful for a bed in his entire life. 

Keith all but collapsed onto the bed, panting and sweating. His eyes were squeezed shut, but no one would ever mistake him for being asleep. His entire body was rigid, stretched tight like a rubber band about to snap.

“You did good, Mullet,” Lance said, reaching down and squeezing Keith’s good shoulder. Keith's muscles were bunched tight beneath his hand, stiff with tension. “Rest up. We’re gonna get you some help now.”

Somewhere, from the depths of his pain and exhaustion, Keith must have heard him, because he nodded. His eyes stayed shut. 

Allura came up the ramp behind him, single-handedly carrying Shiro and laying him gently on Red’s second emergency pallet. 

“Is that everything?” Lance asked. “Everyone?”

“I believe so,” Allura replied. “Are you ready?”

Lance shrugged. The truth was that he was nervous, extremely so. He knew he was a capable pilot and more importantly, he knew he could count on Red. That didn’t stop him from feeling the crushing weight of the mission he was undertaking. No one had said it yet, but they all knew that if Keith didn’t get help, and soon, he wasn’t going to make it. And now, that all rested on Lance’s shoulders. 

And he was just — well, just Lance. 

It was a lot to shoulder. 

Still, he squared his shoulders, taking a backward glance at Keith and Shiro, both lying in the small room behind the cockpit. “Yeah. Yeah, we’re ready. You sure you’ll be all right here?”

Allura smiled. “We’ll manage. But hurry back. We’re all anxious to see both Keith and Shiro on their feet again.”

Then Krolia and Pidge were climbing aboard and Lance was waving to their companions on the ground. Red’s jaw ramp folded shut and the lights all along the console lit up.

“All right, Red,” he said, taking a seat in the pilot’s chair and feeling a familiar presence rumble to life beneath him. “Let’s move.”

* * *

For all the urgency of their mission, the first several hours of the flight were astonishingly boring. They all felt the tension and the need to move quickly, but as they were already on their way, there wasn’t realistically anything they could do to reach their destination faster. 

The readouts on Red’s screens indicated that Planet Andural was about sixteen hours away. Sixteen hours of dark, empty space with nothing to do but worry. 

Lance slumped in the pilot’s chair. He paced the cockpit. He wandered down to the cargo bay and back up again. Mostly, though, he just chewed his nails (a habit from his childhood he’d long since kicked, only to discover to his horror that he’d picked it up again in the last few months) and stressed. 

Shiro remained sleeping, his rest seemingly undisturbed by dreams of any kind. His face never changed as he simply slept like the dead — a comparison Lance was NOT thinking about — as his body apparently refused to wake up even one moment before it was ready. 

Keith’s rest, on the other hand, was like a stormy sea. He was sometimes awake, sometimes asleep, and sometimes in an in-between state that seemed to be neither entirely sleeping nor waking. 

Even when he did manage to sleep, he never seemed to be resting. His brow would crease and his limbs would shake and he would always wake with a gasp, looking frantically around until he found Shiro, at which point he would visibly relax. It was as though no matter times he reassured himself that Shiro was all right, he forgot as soon as he fell asleep again. 

And yet, contradictorily, the sight of Shiro would occasionally send Keith into a weird sort of panic-like state where he would start shaking and mumbling nonsense and couldn’t seem to quite remember where he was. If Lance hadn’t known better, he would almost have thought Keith was afraid of Shiro. But of course, the very thought was ridiculous. He knew they’d fought, but he just couldn’t wrap his brain around the fact that Keith, who would have gladly laid down his life for Shiro any day of the year, could now be flinching so hard at the mere sight of him.

If it was hard to see Keith trying to sleep, it was almost worse to see him awake. He’d been having trouble breathing ever since they’d first discovered his injuries, but Lance swore it was getting worse. His chest heaved for every breath, his features contorted in clear pain as the motion disturbed his broken ribs. 

His fever refused to dissipate as well, despite the sheer volume of blue Altean mystery-pills Krolia kept dosing him with. Nothing seemed to help, and every word Keith uttered was ground out between teeth clenched in pain. Most of the time, he just laid there wheezing, shaking and, Lance assumed, doing his best to simply hang on to the fact that they were headed towards relief. 

The very thought always made him circle back to Red’s console and double-check the readouts to make sure he hadn’t read it wrong and that they were still on schedule. 

“Hey, man,” he said at one point, stopping to lean against the wall near Keith’s bed and look down at him anxiously. “How you holding up?”

Keith’s Adam’s apple bobbed furiously as he swallowed. “How…how do I look like I’m doing?”

“Like shit, to be honest.”

Keith grimaced. “Then I’d say…looking better…then I’m doing.”

The last syllable snagged on the way out, and a string of horrible, hacking, bloody coughs exploded out of Keith’s throat. Krolia lurched forward from her seat beside his bed and she hurried to help him lean over the bucket they’d set nearby for just such occasions. Lance watched, sickened, as Keith convulsed and choked up still more blood, before he had to turn away. 

He couldn’t watch this. He was too much of a coward. 

He hightailed it back to the cockpit, desperate to escape the sound of Keith’s gagging. That was where he found Pidge, frowning and punching away at the readouts on one of the screens.

“Anything?” he asked dimly. 

“I’m trying to boost our communications range,” Pidge said, not bothering to look up as he approached. “Trying to hail the rebels. Maybe if they know we’re coming, they can be ready for us. Ready for Keith.”

Lance was silent and Pidge looked up at him almost guiltily. 

“I know it won't make much of a difference,” she said, almost rebuking herself. “But I don’t know how else to help and I just...I just _hate_ feeling like -”

“Like there’s nothing you can do?” Lance finished.

Pidge nodded glumly. 

“Yeah,” Lance said, slumping back into the pilot’s seat. “Same here.”

He listened, sternly forbidding himself to hope as Pidge opened a comm channel. 

“Hailing rebel base. This is Pidge, Paladin of the Green Lion of Voltron. Repeat, this is Voltron hailing Rebel Base. Does anyone copy?”

Lance tried to ignore the hollow sound of static that was the only answer. 

He turned instead to the endless expanse of space visible through Red’s cockpit. The glorious star-studded darkness was as beautiful as ever, but where it usually filled Lance with a sense of wonder, today it just seemed empty. Empty, vast and utterly without pity. 

Eventually, Pidge gave up on her channel and the two of them sat in silence, contemplating the vast coldness of space.

If Lance was being completely honest, he was starting to drift off — if not to sleep, then at least into a vegetative-like state of exhaustion and stress-induced stupor. This was suddenly and violently interrupted by the sound of Krolia buzzing them on the comms from the next room. 

“Paladins! I need you now!”

Lance barely had time to exchange a worried look with Pidge before they were both leaping up and hurtling through the cockpit doors into Red's interior. The sight that met their eyes had Lance’s heart dropping all the way down into his stomach. 

Keith was sitting up, propped in Krolia’s arms, gasping for breath. His mouth was hanging open as he gaped like a fish out of water — his chest heaving and his fever-bright eyes streaming as he tried and failed to draw in any air. 

He couldn’t breathe. Not even at all. 

“I think there’s too much fluid in his lungs,” Krolia said desperately, running her hands along Keith’s back, chest and face, as though trying to give him the air he needed through sheer force of will. “I need…he needs…needs to get it out. His human anatomy, though….I don’t know…”

Lance was frozen on the spot, but thankfully, blessedly, Pidge was not. She processed the situation in an instant and leapt to action, scrambling to the supplies piled high in Red’s storage spaces. She rummaged around for a minute before returning triumphantly with a long, thin, sharp object that Lance — oh, god, — definitely did NOT want to look at. 

Pidge thrust it at Krolia, who took it uncertainly. “I can explain where you need to use it,” she said. “We’ve got to drain the fluid. I-I’ve never…I mean, I know the theory. And I know human anatomy.”

Lance watched in horror, his pulse pounding in his ears as they laid Keith flat. His movements were growing more frantic, more panicked. He was floundering, twitching, his body reacting involuntarily as it desperately searched for air. 

“Lance! Help me hold him down,” Pidge snapped, and that, at last, jolted him into action. He practically fell forward, positioning himself so he could hold as much of Keith down as possible.

“Sorry, buddy,” he murmured, even as he used his weight to control Keith’s thrashing. It wasn't hard; his movements were growing weaker by the moment. 

“Here, yeah, here. Right there,” Pidge was saying, indicating a place on Keith's chest and Lance saw the needle flash before he looked away. 

There was the unmistakable sound of a foreign object pushing through flesh and blood, and Lance held his breath and tried to focus on not throwing up. The scent of blood was heavy in the crowded space and Keith’s legs were twitching beneath him and it was so hot and so close in here…he couldn’t breathe either…

“Bucket,” Krolia was saying tersely, and despite himself, Lance turned his head to watch as the thick, pinkish fluid drained up the tube now inserted into Keith’s chest and into the bucket. 

There was a tense moment longer and then, to the immediate and palpable relief of everyone in the room, Keith heaved a giant gasp, drawing in an enormous, successful breath.

Lance almost cried in relief, and a quick glance assured him that Pidge and Krolia were having the same reaction as they listened to Keith cough and gag and choke. It sounded horrible, but at least it meant he was getting air. His coughing settled after a moment, giving way to the familiar raspy breaths Lance was beginning to grow accustomed to. They still sounded awful, but Lance had never been more grateful to hear them in his life. 

Keith’s limbs stilled, and, cautiously, Lance released his death-grip. The Black Paladin’s face had gone slack again, lapsing into sleep, unconsciousness or a daze of some kind. 

“Thank you,” Krolia said, still motionless at Keith’s side. She sounded a little short of breath herself. “I don’t…I can’t…”

Her words trailed off and Lance waited, unsure if he should interrupt her to attempt to brush it off or wait for her to finish. He’d only known her a handful of days, but his impression of her — stoic, fierce and formidable — left no room for this kind of vulnerability. Now that he was seeing it, he had no idea how to react. In the end, he and Pidge both stayed silent, listening as her breath hitched and her voice almost cracked. For a moment, Lance thought she might even cry. 

Then she took a deep breath and straightened her stern features back out. 

“Thank you,” she repeated at last. “I thought…I thought I was going to lose him.”

“You don’t need to thank us,” Lance said, still having no other idea how to deal with the unexpected display of emotion from this woman he still didn’t really know and was still (to be honest) a little terrified of. “He’s too stubborn to quit, right?”

Krolia, stubborn as her son, pressed on. “I know it may be difficult to believe, since I was absent for Keith’s entire life,” she hesitated, “but I can think of nothing in this universe that scares me more than the thought of losing him again. I just…I _just_ got him back.”

Slowly, carefully, Pidge reached out a hand and placed it on Krolia’s shoulder. “It’ll be all right. He’s gonna make it.”

Lance nodded and was just opening his mouth to agree when they were interrupted. A fourth voice broke into the conversation — a voice weary and hoarse from disuse.

“…Lance? Pidge? What…what's going on?”

It was Shiro.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made a [tumblr](https://indigogoblue.tumblr.com/), guys!! Follow me for stuff like fic recs, general Voltron content and maybe early chapter previews? Idk haha I'm figuring this out as I go, my friends!
> 
> Thanks for reading!!! :D


	7. Chapter 7

"What's going on?" 

Shiro was struggling to push himself up into an upright position as he scanned the room disorientedly way, his eyes lighting on first one face, then another. Lance didn't think he'd seen Keith yet, since Krolia and Pidge were blocking him from Shiro's point of view, but he knew it was only a matter of time. 

How much did he remember? DId he remember any of it?

"Lance? Pidge?"

Shiro made as if to push himself up with his Galra hand, only the hand wasn’t there, and he lurched to the side. Lance darted forward to catch him, helping him sit up. "Easy, Shiro. Take it easy.”

"Wh...what?" Shiro dragged his eyes up from where they had been glued to his missing limb, his gaze meeting Lance's. Lance read confusion, fear, and traces of panic there, and he swallowed.

Shiro was supposed to be calm. Shiro was supposed to be in control. Shiro was supposed to be the one with all the answers. 

Lance had absolutely no clue what to do with a Shiro that was suddenly none of those things. 

"Hey," he said, trying for a neutral, calm voice. "It’s gonna be okay."

"Lance, what's going on?" Shiro asked. "What…where is everyone?"

"It's all right," Lance said. "You're gonna be fine. Don't worry."

"My arm..."

Heat flooded Lance’s face as he flailed mentally for the right thing to say, and came up utterly empty. "Yeah," he stammered. "It, uh...yeah." He glanced at Pidge desperately for help. 

"Shiro, how are you feeling?" Pidge asked, drawing Shiro's attention away from the stump. 

Shiro frowned, undeterred. "What happened? I think I...I need...." The vague confusion on his fear froze for a moment before morphing into fear and urgency. He shoved the blanket aside and made as if to stand. "Where's Keith? I think..."

Lance swore inwardly. He'd hoped to delay this moment of truth, and perhaps soften a few of the inevitable blows. But Shiro seemed to know something was wrong. And who could say how much he was remembering on his own? The longer they waited to tell him, the more worried he would become and the more assumptions he might make. 

"Just...hold your horses," Lance said, reaching out and gently pushing Shiro back down into a seated position. "Sit down, Shiro. You got pretty banged up."

"How?" Shiro asked, his voice taking on a shade of desperation. "Lance, _what happened_?"

"Um...." Pidge said. "What do you remember?"

Shiro’s eyebrows drew together in concentration and he reluctantly sat back. "We were fighting Zarkon," he said, a little haltingly. "I got his bayard."

Lance and Pidge locked eyes. That was well over a year ago. Had Shiro truly lost so much time?

"Yeah?" Pidge asked. "What about after that?"

The frown lines deepened as Shiro concentrated. "I...I'm not sure....It's..." He brought his remaining hand up to rub his forehead. "I think..."

Just when Lance was convinced that Shiro truly remembered nothing, Shiro sat bolt upright. His eyes flew open. "The Black Lion. Keith!"

"Shiro?"

"Where's Keith? Is he all right?!"

"Shiro." Krolia stood up, her commanding presence instantly dominating the room. "You need to tell us what you remember. What happened with Keith?"

Shiro's body gave a shudder and his eyes took on a haunted look. "I was trapped. In the Black Lion, for months. I tried to tell you all. I tried to reach out, but-"

"Wait," Lance said. "Olkarion? When we were in that mindscape thingie? And you tried to talk to me?"

"I was trying to tell you," Shiro said, his voice wavering. His posture crumbled and he buried his face in his hand. "That wasn't me flying Black all those months. It was _him_. But it was....also me? _We_ tricked Keith into going to that facility. We tried to...tried to....Where is he? Is he alive?"

And Lance thought about lying, and saying that Keith was fine. There would time for the truth later, when Shiro was calmer, and Keith was more stable. As much as he wanted to, though — for his own sake as much as Shiro's — he had a sinking feeling that Shiro wouldn't believe it until he saw Keith for himself. 

So instead, he swallowed and looked Shiro in the eye. "He, yeah, uh, he's alive. He's hurt pretty bad though, Shiro."

True panic lit behind Shiro's eyes and he surged to his feet, leaning unsteadily to one side as his body tried to compensate for the weight of his missing arm. "Where is he? I need to see him."

"He's right here, but, Shiro, I just need to warn you..." Lance hadn't even finished his sentence before Shiro was shouldering him out of the way and stumbling to Keith's bedside.

No one said a word as they stood, watching Shiro take in Keith's ragged, sweaty appearance. Shiro said nothing either. He just sank quietly to his knees, as though his legs couldn't support him any longer. Softly, carefully, he reached out and took one of Keith's limp hands in his own. "Keith..."

"He's gonna be all right," Pidge spoke up, her voice sounding small. "We're flying him to the nearest rebel base now. They're gonna be able to help him."

"I..." Shiro shuddered, his head falling to his chest. " _I_ did this to him."

"No!" Pidge said, and she actually barreled forward, throwing her arms around Shiro where he knelt. "It wasn't you Shiro, you said it yourself."

"It was," he insisted. His breaths were coming faster, and if it were anyone other than Shiro, Lance could have sworn he was on the verge of a panic attack. "I _remember_ it, Pidge. I remember him begging me to stop. I remember what it felt like when I...when I..."

He stood suddenly, almost wrenching Pidge away. "I shouldn't be around him. I...I shouldn't be around any of you. I might hurt you. I don't...I don't want to hurt anyone."

"You won't," Lance said, his voice almost cracking. Tears stung at his eyes and he swiped them away angrily. "We all saw Allura pull you out of Black. It's all you in there, Shiro, just you. You would never hurt any of us."

"You don't understand. I already did."

"But that wasn't your fault!"

"We don't know that, Lance!" Shiro was backing away, eyes wide and panicked in a way that cut deep into Lance's core. "You thought it was me before, too. What if I'm still not really me? What if it's just another one of Haggar's tricks?"

"Shiro, you need to calm down," Krolia said evenly. "Lance is right. We all-"

They were interrupted by the sound of weak coughing and everyone froze as they realized their shouts had dragged Keith out of his restless sleep. 

Shiro had moved back as far as humanly possible while still remaining in the room, watching with desperate eyes as Krolia sat Keith up and held him as he coughed and choked, his body shuddering limply in her arms. 

"Breathe, Keith," she said. "Come on. In and out."

The barest wheeze escaped his throat. “… _Shiro_.”

Almost as though he couldn't help himself, as though he couldn't fight the years of instinct telling him to rush to Keith's side, Shiro stepped forward. "Keith. I'm here."

Keith's eyes, hazy with fever, roved the room restlessly, and Lance could tell he wasn't really seeing any of them. 

"Keith." Shiro stepped closer, visibly torn between his desire to reassure Keith and his desire to put as much distance between them as possible. "I'm right here." He took another step and bent to his knees at Keith’s side, hand twitching as though he wanted to reach out in comfort.

Keith's eyes snapped towards Shiro, and Lance saw the recognition in them just before Keith flinched violently, drawing back towards the wall with a choked cry. 

"No, please. _Please_ , Shiro, don't... we can...please, Shiro...."

Shiro's face drained of all its color as he shot to his feet and backed away.

"Shiro?" Pidge asked, but he just kept backing away, head shaking slowly before he turned and bolted from the room.

"Shiro!" Lance called after him, but there was no response as the doors slid shut in his wake. 

Keith's delirious begging and his haggard breaths filled the room as he continued to tremble and shake, pleading with shadows and begging for Shiro to stop. Desperately, Krolia held him down and Lance watched as his breaths continued to wheeze in and out.

"We need to move faster," Krolia barked. "He's too agitated. We shouldn't have let him see Shiro. I'm not sure how much longer he's going to hang on like this."

"Right," Lance gulped, still trying to scrub the image of Shiro's horror-stricken eyes from his brain. "I'll...I'm gonna..." and then he was bolting from the room as well, racing back to the cockpit where he jammed himself back down in the seat and shoved the controls forward.

"Come on, Red. Keith's in trouble. Let's move!"

Red roared in his mind, sensing his tension, and they raced forwards. Together, they carved a path through the stars as the numbers in the readout began to tick down faster. Impossibly, they were gaining speed as Red plunged forward, faster than Lance had ever felt her move. 

_Hang on, Keith_ , Lance thought fiercely. _Just a little longer_.

* * *

"Shiro?" Pidge's voice echoed in the Red Lion's halls as she walked along. Funny, she'd never thought of the Red Lion as being particularly big inside, until suddenly she was trying to find someone. Now, it seemed that there were dozens of tiny cargo bays and hidden electrical rooms where someone could have hidden themselves.

Lance was busy coaxing Red towards new and hitherto unheard of speeds, while Krolia was trying to keep Keith from puking his guts out. Naturally, that left her as the only one available to track down their erstwhile leader and convince him that he wasn't a danger to Keith or anyone else.

Perfect. Easy-peasy. No problem at all, she thought sarcastically to herself as she tiptoed uncertainly through Red’s halls.

Watching Shiro realize the devastation he'd wrought on Keith was...hard. Really hard. She knew she didn't know the full depth of Shiro and Keith's bond. But anyone could see how much they meant to each other, and how much they trusted each other. They were brothers, willing to sacrifice everything for one another. And to see that bond abused like this...

She imagined, for a brief moment, how she would feel if she'd hurt Matt and hadn't been able to stop it. The thought was unimaginably horrifying. She shuddered and shut the door on those thoughts firmly. This wasn't about her. It was about Shiro, and right now, she needed to find him before he did something rash. 

"Shiro, where are you? I just want to talk."

It was faint, but she heard a soft clink of metal on metal, just around a corner. She followed it, ducking under a row of blinking electrical currents and heavy pipes before she found him. He was seated, legs tucked up as closely as possible, head buried in his single remaining hand. The stump of his arm was still raw and uneven, prickly with jagged, hacked-off circuitry. 

"...Shiro?" Pidge asked quietly, stepping nearer.

Wearily, he raised his head to look at her. "You shouldn't be here. You should get back to the others."

Pidge crossed her arms and stuck out her chin. "No."

"This isn't a game, Pidge. I don't want to hurt you."

"Then you won't." She sat as well, scooting closer — not close enough to spook him, but enough to talk to him without having to shout across the cramped space. 

"You don't know that," he said, his voice quiet and hoarse with emotion. "I hurt Keith. I might hurt you too."

"You didn't hurt Keith, Shiro," she insisted. She wanted to reach out and hug him again, but her instincts told her that was a bad idea. "It was Haggar."

Shiro drew in a deep ragged breath and let it out in the form of something that might have been a sob. "Then why do I still remember...every...single…moment?"

Pidge didn't have a good answer for that. She shook her head slowly. "I don't know," she said, honestly. "I don't know how she did it. But I know it's you in there now, Shiro. Think about it. If the witch was controlling you now, would you feel this way? Would you feel bad about hurting Keith?"

Shiro didn't answer, continuing to breathe in deep, shuddering breaths. She chose to take that as a sign of encouragement and plunged on. "I mean, I get it. It feels awful. But maybe...maybe that's how you know you're you. You love Keith, and you're scared for him, and it hurts. But that's how you know it's you."

"You don't understand," Shiro said hoarsely, lifting his head at last. "He - _We_ \- we were confused even as we were fighting Keith. He was in my head, and he didn't want to do it. But he couldn't stop. He felt so real. He was _scared_."

Pidge shrugged. "Then maybe he was real, too. But I know you're, you, Shiro. Keith saved you. Allura saved you."

"What if you're wrong?" 

And there it was, the fear that had Shiro, their unshakeable leader, running from his friends and hiding as far away from them as he could get. 

Pidge settled back against the wall, stretching her legs out in front of her, and tried to think of what to say. She made no secret of the fact that people weren't her strong suit. She understood computers, programming and above all else, logic. Humans, unfortunately, were the exact opposite of logical.

At this point, she knew that there was no logic or rationality running through Shiro’s head. It was all fear and guilt, neither of which were things that could be reasoned away.

Which left her with the impossible question: how did you convince someone their reality was real? Because of course, you couldn’t. Not really. You could reason it all out, but if they didn't believe it - really, really believe it - then none of it mattered anyway.

She took a deep breath and tried anyway.

"You said that you were inside his head, in a way. How did he feel?"

Shiro looked a little confused. "What?"

"The "other" you. I mean, did he know he wasn't really you?"

Shiro thought about that. "He knew something wasn't right," he admitted at last. "There were gaps, I think. Things he couldn't quite remember. Moods that came out of nowhere. Details of his life that didn't quite make sense."

Pidge nodded. She could work with that. "Ok. So let's test you."

"Test me?"

"Yeah, you know. See what you remember. If things are kinda fuzzy, then we can set up some precautions in case you aren't really you. And if things are clear, then maybe that means we’re ok. It’s really you in there."

Shiro's fingers clenched and unclenched uncertainly around his knees. He said nothing, and Pidge decided to just go ahead.

"What's Matt's favorite breakfast cereal?"

"What?" For a moment, confusion pushed the fear out of Shiro’s expression.

"Go on," she prodded. "I know you know it."

A half-smile appeared at the corners of Shiro's mouth. "Cocoa puffs."

"Exactly. Um, let’s see, what did Adam call you when he was mad at you?"

Shiro eyes her suspiciously. "There's no way you should know that."

Pidge smirked. "My dad told me. He thought it was adorable."

Shiro shook his head, still making a face that was almost a smile. "He would use my rank. He used to call me Lieutenant whenever he wanted to let me know I had messed up.”

Pidge considered whether her next question was stepping too far, before she decided to go ahead and ask it anyway. "How did you meet Keith?"

Shiro looked away. "I...It's not really my place..."

She shrugged. "That's fine. But do you remember?"

He looked distant for a moment, as though picturing it. "Yeah, "he said. “I remember."

"Then, there you have it," Pidge said simply. "You remember all the important things. You're you. You would never hurt Keith. You would never hurt any of us."

The haunted look came back into Shiro's eyes. "He...the way he _looked_ at me. He flinched, Pidge."

"He's sick and he's hurt and he's delirious out of his mind," Pidge said firmly. "He was having a nightmare. But he trusts you. We all do."

Shiro didn’t say anything for a minute, and she had almost decided he wasn’t going to answer when he finally spoke. His voice was barely a whisper. "What if I don't trust myself?"

Pidge answered without hesitation. "Then we'll keep trusting you until you do."

Shiro didn’t say anything after that, and neither did Pidge. They just sat in silence beneath the blinking electrical wiring, listening to the engines creak around them. By degrees, Pidge scooted closer, and Shiro didn’t do anything to stop her. When at last she was close enough, she carefully leaned up and wrapped her arms around him. 

For a long moment, he remained motionless. Then, carefully, as though he was afraid hemight break her, his arm moved slowly to embrace her back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been: a brief departure from our regularly scheduled program of "Keith is dying". 
> 
> Come chat with me on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/indigogoblue), or in the comments here!
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay with this chapter! Adult life got super busy all of a sudden and then to top it all off, I got sick and didn't do much but sleep for a few days. This chapter still isn't quite as polished as I'm usually comfortable with, but I really wanted to post it since it's been so long since I last posted. Apologies for any lingering typos!
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

“Try them again, Pidge.”

“Attention, Rebel Base. This is Voltron, hailing Rebel Base. Do you copy?”

The only response was crackling static. 

“Damn it!” Pidge slammed the headphones back down. “I mean, is it too much to hope they would at least equip these bases with decent tech? They should have been able to hear us ages ago!”

“It doesn’t matter.” Lance checked the readouts for the fourth time in as many minutes. “We should be there in about half a varga anyway.” He patted the console soothingly. “You’re doing great, Red. You’re a real champ. Hang in there just a bit longer, ok?”

The past few hours had quite easily taken the prize as some of the most nerve-wracking of Lance’s entire life. He and Pidge had each gotten about three hours of sleep apiece, taking it in turns, but it wasn't nearly enough. Lance's eyes felt puffy and heavy, and his limbs felt like they'd doubled in weight. Moving seemed a herculean effort. And of course, riding on top of all the stress and exhaustion was the fine layer of guilt that came with knowing no matter how miserable he was, Keith and Shiro were both far worse off.

It had taken hours for Pidge to convince Shiro to come join them in the cockpit. They didn’t bother trying to persuade him to visit Keith, as no one wanted a repeat of Shiro’s earlier panic attack. Now, Shiro sat at the back of the cockpit, drained and haggard, but alert. All things considered, maybe that was the best they could hope for.

Krolia was still in the other room with Keith, and she called in every so often with updates. Not that there was much to update them on. Keith was steadily declining. They all knew it. They all also knew that there was nothing they could do apart from continuing to fly as fast as they already were. 

“We should be able to see it soon,” Lance said, mostly because the silence was too deafening, and no one else was saying anything. “Any minute now, it should be popping up on my scanners.”

“Do we even know this base has the medical equipment we’re going to need?” Shiro asked wearily. 

Lance and Pidge exchanged a glance. “I mean, not exactly,” Lance said. “But it's our best shot. And we have them registered as a Class B base. With that many soldiers stationed there, they should have the equipment to treat Keith.”

He didn’t want to think about what would happen if they didn’t. 

“Lance,” Krolia’s voice broke over the comms. “How much further?” She sounded exhausted. She was the only member of their party who hadn’t slept once the entire trip. Pidge and Lance had both offered to sit with Keith while she got an hour or so of sleep, but she’d bluntly refused. 

Lance checked the readouts again. “29 dobashes, give or take.”

Krolia’s silence was all they got for an answer. 

“How’s he doing?” Lance asked. 

“Badly.”

Lance swallowed. “Just…just hang on. We’re so close.”

Red was going as fast as she could. He didn’t know what to do to urge her towards any greater speeds. He didn’t even know if it was possible. All he could do was sit and hope that if he stared at the numbers ticking steadily downwards on the screen, they would somehow move faster. 

28 dobashes. 

27 dobashes.

26.

25.

Pidge hailed the rebel base again. 

24.

Static.

23.

22.

“How much longer?” Shiro asked. Lance was instantly reminded of a roadtrip he'd gone on with his parents during a vacation to the States. In any other situation, the comparison would have made him laugh. Now, he just gritted his teeth and checked the readouts again.

“21 dobashes.”

“Attention Rebel Base. This is Voltron, hailing Rebel Base. Do you copy?”

20.

19.

“Hang on,” Lance sat up straighter, pointing through the glass at a brown speck appearing against the inky darkness of space. “Is that it?”

They both leaned forward and even Shiro stood up to look. It was tiny, so small that Lance could hold up one finger and cover it from view. The screen highlighted the distant planet, magnifying it and flashing the coordinates at them on the readouts. Lance let out an enormous breath as he recognized them. “That’s it! We made it!”

Pidge sank back down into her chair in relief. “If we can literally see them from here, then why the ever-loving FUCK can’t they receive my transmissions? You had one job, Matt. Get these rebels some decent tech!”

“Paladins,” Krolia called urgently. “I need help.”

Of course, Keith _would_ choose this precise moment to go into crisis. If they all survived this, Lance was sitting him down and having a serious talk about his incessant need to be a drama queen. 

Now, however, Lance lurched to his feet, almost tripping over Pidge. “You got this Red!” he called over his shoulder as they thundered into the next room. 

He wasn’t sure what he was expecting to see — Keith sitting up and vomiting, perhaps, or coughing. Instead, Keith was still lying down. He appeared to be awake, although his eyes were glazed with fever. His skin was gray and ashy and Lance could feel the heat radiating from it even without touching him. He was mumbling tiredly under his breath, his words so slurred that Lance couldn’t make out even a single one.

“He won’t wake up, and he won’t sleep,” Krolia said. Worry lines were carved deep into her face and shadows ringed her eyes. “He doesn’t know where he is and I’m worried he might…I can’t get him to come back.”

“Keith,” Lance hovered awkwardly, suddenly unsure of what to do with his hands or feet. Not that it mattered. Keith made no sign that he’d heard anything. “Keith, man, you’ve gotta wake up. We’re almost there. Hear that? You almost made it.”

Keith’s eyes roved the room restlessly, jumping from one of them to another without giving any sign that he even knew who they were. Cracked lips opened and closed, his words whispered and unintelligible. Rattly, bloody coughs punctuated his fevered mutterings. 

“Keith,” Krolia said. “Keith, can you hear me?”

Lance reached out, tentatively laying his hand on Keith’s arm. He didn't expect much of a reaction, if he got one at all. So he jumped in surprise when Keith reacted like he’d been electrocuted. He jolted away from Lance's hand, shooting into a sitting position and trying to get up. 

“Keith!” Krolia reacted almost instantly. She pulling him back down, but he fought against her grasp, his eyes still glazed with fever and his every breath coming out in a panting wheeze. He wrenched away from her as violently as he could in his weakened state and to Lance’s eyes, it could not have been clearer that he had no idea who she was. 

“Keith, come on, you need to calm down. Wake up, dude!” He held up his hands, trying to telegraph his friendly intent, unsure if Keith was even coherent enough to see him.

“He needs to be still!” Pidge had retreated to the doorway, which she blocked in case he tried to bolt. “He’s gonna rip the tube out of his chest!”

“I’m trying!” Lance said, frustrated. “It’s gotta be his fever, right? He’s delirious and doesn’t know what he’s seeing. We need to -”

“Shiro,” Pidge said. “We need Shiro.”

“Um, bad idea,” Lance countered, physically blocking Keith, who had made another attempt to scramble off the bed. Krolia pushed him back down and leaned her weight on each shoulder, trying to pin him down. “Remember what happened last time they saw each other? They both freaked out.”

“Do you have a better idea?” she demanded. “He might not know us right now, but he’ll know Shiro. He has to.” She twisted her body around in the doorway, leaning back into the cockpit. “Shiro! We need you in here!”

From his vantage point, Lance couldn’t see what was going on in the cockpit, but he could imagine it — Shiro shaking his head, his face gone white as a sheet. 

“We don’t have time for this,” Pidge said impatiently. “Shiro, _Keith needs you_.”

There was a moment’s pause, filled with Keith's quiet, desperate sounds of distress as he still struggled to escape their protective grasp. Then Pidge stepped aside and Shiro’s tall frame appeared in the doorway. He was holding himself more tentatively than Lance had ever seen him do in his life. It almost looked like he was afraid to breathe.

Moving jerkily, like a puppet being controlled against his will, he took a step forward. “Keith?”

Keith’s eyes snapped towards the sound. He didn’t say anything, but his struggles grew weaker. 

Lance nodded and waved Shiro forward. “Yeah, that. That’s awesome. Keep talking!”

Shiro took another step, moving so that he was within Keith’s field of vision. “I’m…I’m here, Keith.”

Keith’s eyes locked onto Shiro’s. “Shir-Shiro?”

Shiro swallowed, Adam’s apple working furiously in his throat. “Yeah, buddy. It’s me.”

Tears sprang into Keith’s eyes then. He gave one last pitiful attempt to shake Krolia off. “Shiro, I can’t…I can’t…I’ve gotta find you…”

Then Shiro was crossing the room in giant strides and taking Keith’s sweaty hand in his. “I’m right here. You don’t have to find me. You already did that. You saved me, Keith. And I'm so sorry. I...Keith, I…”

Lance felt almost like an intruder on the moment. The raw intimacy was palpable in the room, and it felt like he was seeing something that had never been intended for his eyes. Keith would hate it if he knew Lance was seeing this. Even Shiro would probably be uncomfortable, under any other circumstances. Lance swiped at the tears welling up in his own eyes and glued his gaze to the ground. 

“Listen to me,” Shiro was saying. “You did so good. But you’re hurt now, and you’ve gotta rest.”

“Gotta…need to find…Shiro…please…”

“You already did. Now you need to rest.”

Lance peeked up through his eyelashes. Pidge had her hands clasped on either side of her head in distress, tension written in every line of her body. Krolia was awkwardly seated with Keith’s head in her lap and her hands braced against his shoulders. Shiro was still gripping Keith’s hand and Keith…Keith’s body gave a little shudder before giving up the struggle and falling still. His eyes slid shut and his hand went lax in Shiro’s.

Lance’s heart jolted in his chest and for a moment, the wild thought that Keith was dead made his throat constrict. But Krolia was checking his pulse and visibly relaxed. “He’s asleep.”

A sigh rippled across the room as everyone let out a breath. Shiro physically crumpled, knees buckling as he folded into a seated position next to Keith’s bed. It didn’t look like he intended moving anytime soon.

For a moment, no one said anything. 

Then there was a beeping from the cockpit and Lance was shaking himself off and dashing back to the pilot’s seat. His heart leapt as he saw it was an incoming transmission from the nearby planet. Eagerly, he accepted it and watched as the screen flashed to life. 

“Attention, Voltron.” It was a rebel officer, a tall humanoid with pale pink skin and a disturbing abundance of arms. “We’ve sighted you on our scanners and welcome you to Planet Plagia. We had no news of your intended visit. To what do we owe the pleasure?”

Lance was so relieved he could have cried. He felt Pidge gripping his shoulder tightly from behind the chair and knew without even looking that she felt the same. 

“It’s, uh, it’s a long story,” he said at last, his voice cracking. “We need medical assistance for one of our paladins as soon as we land. Can you help us?”

The alien blinked in what he assumed was confusion. “Certainly. Proceed to the coordinates we’re sending you. Our resources are at your disposal, Voltron Paladin.”

The transmission bleeped out, followed by a set of coordinates that popped up on the display. Hands shaking in relief, Lance punched them in and began guiding Red on a downward trajectory towards the atmosphere.

* * *

Red landed just outside the rebel facility, almost crashing to the planet’s surface in their haste and letting out a roar of triumph that shook the ground around them. Through Red’s eyes, Lance could see the small crowd of rebels that had come out to meet them and he watched as they shrank under the force of Red’s emotions. 

He spared half a second to pat the console. “Thanks, Red. You’re the best.”

Then he and Pidge were running into the back, where Krolia had already scooped Keith up into her arms and headed for Red’s jaw-ramp. 

Immediately upon exiting, they were bombarded by a hundred questions and a crowd of well-meaning aliens, all surging forward to help. 

“Paladins!”

“What happened?”

“Where are the rest of the lions?”

“Where’s the castle?”

“Everybody needs to back up!” Pidge bellowed and to Lance’s surprise, everyone obeyed. The crowd stepped back, leaving just a small cluster of aliens that Lance assumed must be medics and were bearing a stretcher. 

Krolia wasted no time in laying Keith on the stretcher and following along beside him as the rebels began rushing him off to the nearby buildings. Shiro, who hadn’t left Keith’s side once since the earlier incident, followed close at their heels. Dimly, Lance heard Krolia explaining Keith’s injuries, rapid-fire, to the overwhelmed medics. 

Which left Lance and Pidge to deal with the crowd of questioning rebels. 

“Are there not five paladins?” someone asked. “Where are the rest of them?”

Lance took a deep breath, knees feeling like they might simply give out after the ordeal his nerves had been put through in the last few days. 

“I’ll explain everything. Who’s in charge here? I guess…I guess we’ve got a lot to talk about.”

* * *

What felt like hours later, Keith was still in surgery, locked away behind closed doors. He’d been gone for hours already, and Lance was starting to fear the worst. He’d rushed through his meeting with the rebel commander on site, giving him the shortest possible explanation of what had happened so that he could run after Keith. 

Upon bursting into the med center, he’d been told in no uncertain terms that he had to wait outside. This, he’d protested, was wildly unfair, as Krolia AND Pidge AND Shiro had all been allowed in. And sure, maybe that was because the doctors were all aliens and Krolia and Pidge were there to provide insight into Keith’s anatomy (while neither of them were doctors, they at least had a fairly good idea of what went where inside a human/Galra body) and Shiro was there because apparently, no one had been able to make him leave. 

Which left Lance to sit outside all by himself, bags under his eyes and a cup of something like space-coffee in his hands. It tasted like sawdust and he desperately wished Hunk were there to whip out some wacky space ingredients to improve it. On an unrelated note, Hunk gave amazing hugs. Not that he was thinking about that now.

Keith had to be ok. He had to. Lance had not raced all the way here just to lose him on the operating table. 

Every so often, one of the rebel officers would come in to check on him, and Lance did his best to be polite despite the fact that really, the only thing he wanted to see right now was Keith. God, he'd never missed arguing with someone so much.

What if Keith had already died hours ago and no one had bothered to tell Lance yet? He’d seen Keith’s injuries for himself, and he knew they weren’t the kind of thing a person was meant to survive. Not without something like a healing pod, which he’d gently been informed that the rebels didn’t have. Which meant that Keith was at the mercy of good old-fashioned surgery and that fact alone had Lance chewing his nails like there was no tomorrow.

Lance wasn’t sure how much time had passed when he found himself being shaken awake. Only then did he realize that he’d literally passed out, slumped in his chair outside the door. Pidge was shaking him, and there were bags under her eyes to match the ones he knew must be under his. 

“Pidge.” He shot upright. “ ’s going on? Is Keith ok?”

Pidge took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. For a long moment, she didn’t say anything. Dread began to pool in Lance’s gut, cold and heavy. Then she replaced her glasses and look up at him. When she spoke, it was with a voice that was tired but happy.

“They think he’s gonna be ok.”

Lance gaped at her, convinced he'd misheard her. "...what?" 

A tiny smile crossed her face. "I mean, he's still not in great shape and the recovery's not gonna be fun and he's gonna be a BITCH about it, but they think he's gonna make it." 

The words took a minute to sink in. Lance had so thoroughly convinced himself that Keith was gone that he barely understood her, at first. When he finally realized what she was saying, his jaw dropped. They’d actually done it. They’d made it in time. They’d saved him. 

His brain was too tired and too shocked and too relieved to form words. So instead, he reached out and pulled Pidge into a giant hug. 

He'd been so sure, _so_ sure that their efforts had all been for nothing, and that they would lose Keith again after just getting him back. Now, to suddenly know that he was going to be ok? It was almost too much to take in all at once. The lump that had been stuck in Lance's chest since the beginning of the whole ordeal rose to his throat, and he could feel the dam starting to break. So he squeezed his arms tighter around Pidge, buried his face in her tawny hair and let himself cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, guys! Come hang out with me on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/indigogoblue)!  
> Next up: falling action!


	9. Chapter 9

The darkness was gentle, soft, and quiet, and Keith was comfortable. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept this well. It was almost annoying, then, when the world began to push in around the edges of his unconscious mind. First, it was the gentle ‘beep, beep, beep’ of some sort of monitor or radar, steady and quiet. Then it was awareness of something soft under his cheek, before he realized his eyelids were glued shut, and almost too heavy to open even if he’d wanted to. 

The beeping was soothing, almost, and his body was so heavy. Maybe he’d just nod off for a few more minutes while he had the chance…

Then he heard a sound like someone scuffing their foot against the ground and all thoughts of sleep flew from his head as he tried to remember where he was. He wasn’t in the Castle…he wasn’t with the Blades…he wasn’t on the space whale….

Cautiously, Keith pried his heavy eyelids open, pushing past the crusty residue that stuck them shut and made him wonder just how long he’d been asleep for.

He didn’t recognize his surroundings. Everything was drab and brown, utterly different from the stark whites and turquoises of the Castle, or the blacks and purple of the Marmora bases. To add to the confusion, he was lying in an unfamiliar bed and there were a concerning number of wires and tubes poking out from under the blankets, connecting to a row of nearby machines that seemed to be the source of the beeping. 

And there, sitting in a chair by his bedside, sound asleep and slumped over with her hand propped on her fist, was his mom. 

It all came exploding back into his mind at once. The fight. Shiro. The cave on that tiny moon. The choking, horrifying, all-consuming and inescapable feeling of drowning in his own blood. Everything flashed through his mind at once as he remembered. 

What he didn’t remember was exactly how he’d gotten here. There were a few hazy blips in his mind — he remembered boarding Red, and a few scattered occasions of being awake after that — but it was mostly a big blank. 

He surged awake, reaching down to rip the blanket off himself and push himself upright. _Had to get up. Find out where he was. Find out what had happened to the others…._

Krolia was awake in an instant, wrestling the blanket from his grip and practically pushing him back down. “Keith, you need to lie down. You’re still hurt. You have to rest.”

Keith didn’t struggle. He let her push him back down, mostly because now that he was breathing hard, his ribs _did_ still twinge painfully. He clenched his teeth and breathed through the pain, trying to fight down the rising panic. “Where am I? Where is everyone?”

Krolia stared at him evenly, still holding him down. “Are you going to try to get up again?”

Keith frowned, knowing full well that there was only one answer that would get him the answers he wanted. “No,” he said, sliding further down into bed to prove it. 

Krolia relaxed. She pulled her chair closer to his bedside and resumed her seat. “You’ve been asleep for three days. We made it to the rebel base where they were able to successfully perform an operation that likely saved your life.”

Her words sounded matter-of-fact, and to anyone who didn’t know her, it might have looked like she was emotionless about the entire thing. But Keith knew her, and he could see the worry-lines in her face. He could hear the slight tinge of emotion in her voice. The knowledge made him feel strange, like he didn’t fit into his own skin anymore. 

“And the others?”

“Lance, Shiro, and Pidge have been by your side on and off these last few days. They’ve been worried sick,” she explained. “The other paladins and the Alteans are due to arrive later today.”

The others had been at his side? They were worried? Hadn’t he failed as Black Paladin? Wouldn’t they be upset with him? 

She pulled him from his thoughts with a question of her own. “How are you feeling?”

Keith opened his mouth to give his usual, knee-jerk response of “I’m fine”. But his mom was looking at him sternly and he knew that she wouldn’t believe a word of it. Instead, he closed his mouth and thought about it. 

One by one, he gently tested each of his limbs under the blanket. The shoulder that had been dislocated was still sore, but it seemed to be working. The sling was even gone.

He filled his lungs with the deepest breath he could manage and held it, for a minute. His ribs twinged, but it was a distant, muted sort of pain, like listening to someone shout through several closed doors. It made him wonder just how many pain medications he was on. He wasn’t coughing, either, and while his lungs and throat were sore, his breaths had been coming easily and without effort. Cautiously, he let the breath out. 

“Ok. I think.” His voice was raspy from disuse and he cleared his throat, which _did_ make him cough. The cough hurt and rattled a bit, but he brought his hand up to cover it and when he brought it down, there was no blood. 

“Your fever broke last night,” Krolia explained. “You’re still far from “ok”, but the doctors say that the real danger is behind you. The worst is over.”

Keith’s hand reached up for his cheek at the mention of his fever, as he remembered the oozing, infected burn. Krolia’s hand reached out to stop him just as he encountered the thick piece of gauze still taped into place. 

“The doctor’s think it’s going to scar.” She was never one to mince words. Just one of the things she’d passed onto him. “But the worst of the infection is passed.”

Keith winced at that. He didn’t care what he looked like, really. But to be reminded of his battle with Shiro every time he looked in the mirror would be…hard. Shiro, too, would have to live with the reminder every time he looked at him. Somehow, that almost stung worse.

“How…how bad was it?” he dared ask, at last. He hoped he wouldn’t have to clarify that it wasn’t just the burn he was talking about.

Krolia, thankfully, understood. “You don’t remember?”

Keith shook his head. “I remember leaving in Red. After that, it’s just bits and pieces.”

“Not surprising, I suppose,” Krolia said. “You were unconscious for the last several hours of the trip. Your body was beginning to shut down. If it hadn’t been for the efforts on the parts of your friends, you wouldn’t have made it.”

Heat flooded Keith’s cheeks as he burned with shame at her words. He was supposed to be the leader. He was supposed to be the one making hard calls and leading the team on its mission to liberate the universe. Yet he hadn’t even been able to save himself. Without the other paladins, it sounded like he would have died. What kind of leader did that make him? 

Krolia leaned forward then, reaching out to smooth the hair away from his forehead. It startled him, at first, before he realized that it felt…nice. He closed his eyes and took in a deep breath, letting it out carefully before his ribs started to ache in warning. 

“It’s…good to see you awake.” His mother’s voice was soft, almost like she was afraid she might break him. He’d only ever heard her speak that gently before once, and that was during the visions on the space whale, when she’d held him in her arms as a baby. “We were all afraid.”

He opened his eyes and saw the way they had grown tender, her thumb moving back and forth gently over his forehead. “ _I_ was afraid. I thought…I thought I might lose you again.”

He swallowed hard, and suddenly found that his throat had gone tight. “You didn’t,” he said, almost whispering. “I’m right here.”

“And for that, I’m thankful.” She withdrew her hand and he found that he almost missed it. “If you’re feeling up to it, I can go tell your friends that you’re awake. They’ll all be glad to see you awake.”

Keith stomach twisted and for a moment, he thought he might be sick. He wanted to see them, he _did_ , but at the same time, he wasn’t sure how to face them. He had screwed up — and he’d done it so badly. What if they didn’t want to see him?

“If you’d prefer, I could just send Shiro in first?” Krolia suggested. “I could say that you’d rather see people one at a time?”

Would that be better or worse? Keith almost wasn’t sure. At least this way, he would know sooner rather than later, if his failure truly was unforgivable. Still, he shrugged, trying to play off his inner turmoil. “Yeah, ok,” he said offhandedly. “Sure.”

His mother’s mouth quirked, as if she had a fair idea of how little his outward nonchalance reflected his thought process, but she didn’t say anything. She grasped Keith’s hand in her own one more time before releasing it and leaving him alone with his thoughts, at least for the moment. 

He wanted to see Shiro. He wanted so badly to see for himself that Shiro was truly all right. But the uncertainty and the guilt were twisting his stomach into knots at the very thought of seeing him again. Shiro would feel guilty about what had happened, because he was Shiro, and that was how he operated. And Keith somehow had to own up to the fact that, after only a few days as the Black Paladin, he’d already managed to royally screw it up. Again. 

He’d caused the team to split up. He hadn’t been able to shoulder the weight of his own injuries, and he’d dragged the whole team down in the process. How could he look at Shiro after that kind of failure?

These were the thoughts churning through his mind when the door eased open a crack and Shiro stepped into the room. 

He looked tired, Keith noticed immediately. His white hair was still a shock to see, and his arm was still missing, an observation that sent guilt flooding through Keith’s veins. But all these observations almost paled in comparison to the shock that came from seeing the way Shiro was carrying himself. 

He moved like he was walking on eggshells. His expression was carefully restrained, and he was holding his body like he was afraid to take up too much space. Keith had been by Shiro’s side through everything from space battles to petty squabbles back on Earth, and he’d never seen him like this. Not ever. 

A wrench twisted at Keith’s heart and everything else fled his mind other than the fact that Shiro was hurting, and it was his fault. 

Krolia’s warning utterly forgotten, Keith flung off the blankets in one quick motion. Heedlessly, he ripped the wires and tubes from the back of his hand, causing a shrill alarm to begin beeping. He barely even heard it. He was too busy barreling across the room and throwing himself into Shiro’s arms, which opened in surprise just in time to catch him. 

“Shiro,” he said weakly. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t mean to take your arm. It was an accident and I’m sorry I didn’t find another way. I’m sorry I didn’t—”

“Keith,” Shiro stopped him, his arm wrapped so carefully around Keith, mindful of the broken ribs. “You have _nothing_ to apologize for.”

“I broke up the team,” Keith mumbled, voice muffled in Shiro’s shirt. 

“Keith.” Shiro’s voice cracked. “Listen to me. You don’t need to apologize.”

And Keith wanted to believe it. But it was too much —too big of an idea for right now. Instead, he just stood there, shaking, wrapping his arms around Shiro’s comforting, solid presence. Nothing else existed. 

Then Keith became aware of the fact that the shrill alarm was still beeping anxiously and his knees were shaking weakly and his face was wet with tears, and Shiro was the only thing keeping him from collapsing into a puddle on the ground. 

A doctor (a terrifying looking alien with spines and three eyes) burst into the room then, likely expecting to find Kith dead or dying, and immediately launched into a torrent of reprimands before ordering Keith back into bed THAT INSTANT. Shiro helped him back to bed and, once the doctor was satisfied, they were left alone again. 

The minute the door was closed, the words burst out of Keith. “You’re all right? You’re really all right? Are you sure?”

“Me?” Shiro made a sound that was halfway between a laugh and something else that Keith didn’t even want to try to name. “Keith, I should be asking you that. You were _dying_ , Keith. And it’s…god, it was all me. I…almost…I could have…”

“No it wasn’t,” Keith said, sitting up again determinedly. “It was Haggar, Shiro. None of it was your fault. You were the one who saved us. You and Black. You can’t…you can’t just go blaming yourself.”

Shiro gave another choked laugh, looking up at him out of the corner of his eye. “Says the guy who won’t stop blaming himself.”

Keith felt his face flush, and he scowled. “That’s different.”

“It isn’t. Keith, you did more in your situation than anyone could be expected to do, and you got hurt horribly because of it.”

“I don’t care,” Keith said stubbornly. “It wasn’t your fault, and I’d do it again. If it meant saving you, Shiro, I would have died. I don’t care.”

Shiro reached a hand up and passed it over his face, massaging his temples. “I…I appreciate that, but that’s not what I’m looking for here. You _should_ care. You shouldn’t have had to do that for me.”

“Still-”

“Look.” Shiro cut him off, reaching out and laying a hand on Keith’s shoulder. “We’re not going to get anywhere arguing like this. Let’s…what do you say we make a deal? What if we agree to forget about blame? I’ll promise to quit blaming myself, but you have to agree to do the same.”

Keith frowned. “But-”

“Listen, if we’re playing the blame game, then I promise I have _much_ more to blame myself for then you, and I’m going to win. So do we have a deal?”

And he had a point. Not that Keith blamed Shiro, but he knew that Shiro was blaming himself. And if this was the only way to get him to stop….Keith didn’t have _really_ to stop blaming himself. He just had to stop saying it. 

“I…I suppose.”

Seemingly satisfied, Shiro sat back. And Keith twisted his hands together into the blanket, turning the bigger question over and over in his mind, but not knowing how to broach it. He didn’t know how Shiro would react, and the not-knowing was torture. Maybe it was better to just blurt it out. Maybe it was better to make it a statement than a question.

He raised his head and started to speak, at the exact same time as Shiro also started to speak. They both got a few words out before realizing what had happened, and awkwardly falling silent.

Shiro gestured. “Sorry. Why don’t you go first?”

It was too late to back away then, so Keith cleared his throat and spoke quietly. “I’ll just…as soon as I’m well enough, I’ll head back to the Blades. Krolia and I should report back, anyway. You can have Black back, and it’ll all…all be…” 

He trailed off as Shiro gave him a confused look. 

“Back to the Blades? What are you talking about? Black has chosen you. You’re the leader of Voltron.”

And then Keith was shaking his head, tears threatening to spill out. He couldn’t back down from this one. He had to make Shiro see. “I’m not, I’m _not_. You are, Shiro. Black chose you. He only picked me because there was no one better and he clearly chose wrong. I even got a second chance at it and I screwed up even worse this time.”

“Keith, you didn’t screw up.”

“I did,” he insisted miserably, twisting the blankets tighter around his fists. “I delayed our whole mission by getting hurt and not being able to deal with it myself and splitting up the team and making them bring me here. I _failed_ , Shiro. All right? I failed. 

“Keith.” Through swimming eyes, Keith saw Shiro push himself out of the chair and sit on the bed next to Keith. Gently, he reached out and pulled Keith into his chest, holding him in a one-armed embrace. “Listen to me. You did not fail. All right? You were hurt, really badly. It’s not through any fault of your own, and you don’t have to be sorry for it. All right? Being Black Paladin doesn’t make you invincible.”

Keith sat stiffly, stubbornly refusing to cry. He didn’t trust himself to speak either, which meant he just sat miserably, unable to contradict Shiro, but unwilling to believe him, either. 

“And as for going back to the Blades,” Shiro continued. “Who would fly Black?”

“You would,” Keith said, startled and pulling back to look Shiro in the eye. “He’s your lion.”

Shiro shook his head, a little ruefully. “I’m not sure. I mean, in time, maybe Black and I can rebuild our bond. I’m not sure. But at least for now, Black is yours. I think…I don’t know if I’m in any shape to be leading Voltron, at least not yet.” He gave an awkward chuckle. “Frankly, I’m still getting used to having a physical body again.”

Keith had to have heard wrong. “But I…I messed up, Shiro.”

“Well,” Shiro said, scratching the back of his neck in thought. “You’re right. You didn’t tell the team you were hurt, and that definitely qualifies as messing up. I’m sure you’ll mess up again. And again. In fact, you’ll probably do it a lot of times,” Shiro said. “We’re people, Keith. We make mistakes. It’s what makes us human. Err, half-human, I suppose.”

Keith let out a choked laugh despite himself. 

“The point is, no one’s going to force you to do anything you don’t want. If you truly don’t want the job, we’re not going to make you stay. But you should know that you’re more qualified to lead Voltron than anyone else I know. And the team wants you to stay, Keith. We all want you to stay. And we hope…we hope maybe you want to stay, too.”

There was a knock at the door then, and a rebel Keith didn’t recognize stuck his head in. “Sorry to interrupt, sir, but the Commander’s ready for you now.”

Shiro sighed and stood. “I’ll be right there.”

The rebel nodded, and ducked out again.

Keith felt like he needed to say something, but he was still afraid that the tears might start if he did. 

Shiro waited a moment, as though waiting for Keith to speak, before turning and heading for the door. “Take your time and think about it,” he said softly. “But remember what I said. We’d all really, really like it if you stayed. We could use you, for the trip back to Earth.”

Then he was gone, leaving Keith with a messy, tangled-up tornado of emotions. He was still trying to sort out the guilt, fear, frustration, and confusion, without much luck, when the door burst open again and Lance and Pidge came rushing into his hospital room. At that, it was hard to feel anything beyond the smile he could feel growing on his face. 

Pidge practically threw herself onto the bed on top of him, ignoring Lance’s shout of, “Pidge, careful!” to pull him into a bear hug. Startled, he hugged her back carefully, wary of doing it wrong. Then she was pulling back and there were tears on her face. “Next time? You tell us if you’re hurt, you idiot. TELL US.”

He felt color rising into his cheeks and he looked away, mumbling something unintelligible. Luckily, there was almost no reason to respond, because Lance was talking enough for both of them. 

“…and then I was like, “Red, we need to go faster!” And then Red went so fast, like, SO freaking fast. Dude, I’ve never seen her go so fast. And you were so delirious you didn’t even know what was going on, and we tried to radio the rebels at least 20 times and…”

Keith lay back on his pillows, watching skeptically as Lance dramatically narrated the way they’d rushed Keith to Planet Plagia. It took a long time in the telling and by the time Lance was done, he was out of breath. He had to flop back in the chair to breathe. 

“Wow, Lance,” Pidge said sarcastically. “Way to be humble.”

“Listen, we all did good work,” Lance said. “Myself included.”

“Yeah,” Keith said. “About that. I…thanks, guys. I really, really appreciate it.”

Lance squinted at him from his slouching position. “Do my ears deceive me, or did the great Keith Kogane himself just thank me?”

Keith glared at him. “Don’t get used to it.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re welcome,” Pidge waved a hand. “But let’s not forget the main point here, which is that none of this would have been necessary if you’d just told us you were hurting in the first place.”

Keith flushed, ducking his head. “I didn’t want to worry anyone.”

“Yeah, and that’s bullshit,” Pidge said. “What would you do if one of us pulled that stunt?”

“It’s not the same!” Keith said, with some heat.

“Why?”

“Because I’m supposed to be the leader!” There it was. He said the words almost without meaning to, and now that they were out, he almost recoiled from them in embarrassment. Falteringly, he tried to explain himself.

“I…you don’t get it. I failed. I wasn’t good at this Black Paladin thing the first time, and I screwed it up this time, too. I’m no _good_ at this, guys. I can’t keep…messing up and putting everyone else in danger.” 

For a moment, there was silence. Keith didn’t miss the way Lance and Pidge glanced at one another covertly.

“You know, Keith,” Pidge began hesitantly. “The Black Lion’s pretty cool. And the Black Paladin is pretty important. But Voltron is made up of five lions. Five paladins. Not just one.”

“Right,” Lance nodded, picking up his train of thought. “There’s a reason that Voltron is the most powerful weapon in the universe. It’s because it’s made up of five people. No one can do it all alone, dude. Everyone needs a team supporting them. Even a Black Paladin. Like, that’s the whole point of a team. So that you have people watching your back. And you watch their backs in return. And together, you can do more than any of you could do alone.”

“What he’s saying,” Pidge finished, “is that we don’t care how much you mess up. We’re a team, and we’re here for each other. No matter what.”

The first tear finally made its way down Keith’s cheek, trickling down his chin and spotting the blanket. Another one followed, then another. Keith swiped at them angrily, but he didn’t have the chance to say anything else, because Pidge was wrapping her arms around him again. And this time, he hugged back tightly. 

It was a lot to take in, just then. He wasn’t sure he quite dared to believe it. Not yet anyway. But it sounded nice. And maybe, just maybe, he could begin to entertain the possibility. 

They talked a while longer before a doctor came back in to shoo them out, and announce that Keith needed his rest. As they left, Keith reached out and snagged Pidge’s hand, pulling her down low towards him so he could whisper. 

‘What’s up?” she asked, taking her cue from him and dropping her voice to a whisper. 

He swallowed, trying to think how to say what he wanted to say. “Um, you…you mentioned Naxzela. Earlier. Back in the cave?”

She locked him in an eagle-eyed gaze. “You remember that?”

He nodded. “I just wanted…I mean…does everyone know about that? I didn’t think…”

“You thought your little stunt was a secret?” she finished for him. He nodded, a little embarrassed that he’d apparently been so transparent. 

She reached out and flicked his hair affectionately. “No. No one else knows. I only know because I could tell something was wrong after that battle, and I bullied it out of Matt. He made me swear not to tell anyone else.”

Relief flooded Keith. “ _Thank you_.”

“It’s not my business to tell everyone else,” she shrugged, straightening up. “I have to assume you know what a terrible idea it was by now, so I’m not gonna beat you over the head about it, although believe me, I’ve thought about it. And I mean, it’s your call. But I think you should tell the others.”

“They wouldn’t…wouldn’t get it.”

“Hmm, I dunno,” she said, flashing him one last smile as she paused in the doorway on her way out. “You might be surprised, if you give us a chance. We might understand more than you'd think."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. Many. Hugs. In this chapter.
> 
> I think there's just one more chapter to go, although it might stretch into two? We'll see how it goes :)
> 
> My [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/indigogoblue)!  
> 


	10. Chapter 10

The rest of the lions arrived the next day. Coran filled everyone in with a lengthy explanation of how they’d gotten the lions running again, although if Keith was being honest, he checked out after about the third sentence. Distantly, he gathered that it had something to do with a combination of Allura’s alchemy and some rare element they’d found on the moon’s surface. It didn’t really matter, anyway. 

What mattered was that the others were there and that somehow, inexplicably, they seemed to be of the same opinion as Shiro, Lance, and Pidge. That Keith was not at fault for anything that had happened and should continue as Black Paladin. And it was driving Keith crazy because none of it made any sense. 

It was as though to them, there wasn’t even need for a debate. As though they had no idea how confusing and illogical they were being. Keith _knew_ how these things were supposed to go, and this wasn’t it. This was uncharted territory, and he didn’t know how to make sense of it. 

The only thing more frustrating than his friends’ illogical behavior was his own recovery process. He hadn’t realized until now just how much they’d all relied on healing pods to deal with their injuries, and just how painful recovery was without them. If they’d been at the Castle, he would have been back in fighting condition in a few days, tops. As things stood now, however, the process was agonizingly slow and drawn out.

And of course, along with the slow recovery process came the crushing weight of guilt, knowing that even now, he was continuing to slow the others down. If it weren’t for him, they could have already been headed to Earth by now, and he tried to tell them this. Repeatedly, in fact. He insisted that they go on without him. He tried every way he could think of to convince them. And every time, much to his frustration, they refused to hear of it. 

The days turned into a week, and one week turned into two weeks. No one said a word to him about wanting to hurry up and get moving. No one suggested going without him. No one mentioned Keith’s offer to return to the Blades, which meant that by the time the two weeks were up, Keith didn’t know where that offer stood. 

Did they really want him to leave, and were simply too polite to say it? Or did they really, genuinely want him to continue leading Voltron? He couldn't tell. 

The doctor officially released him at the end of the two weeks, saying that he was far from healed, but that he was stable enough to leave, if that’s what they wanted. The doctor’s spines bristled as he informed Keith of this, telling him in no uncertain terms that if he even THOUGHT about getting himself hurt again before his ribs were healed, he’d have no one but himself to blame. 

All of which meant that while Keith was released and ready to go, the big question had yet to be unanswered. Keith wanted desperately for someone to come right out and ask him, or tell him what they had decided about his fate as Black Paladin. But no one did. They all acted as though the journey back to Earth would begin the next morning, and still no one asked him whether or not he’d be going. It was tearing him apart with anxiety and that was why, the night before they were due to depart, Keith found himself on the roof of the rebel compound, seeking solace in the vast expanse of stars overhead. 

He sat with his back leaned against an exhaust duct, knees carefully pulled up to his chest and arms wrapped around them. Kosmo (who Keith kept accidentally referring to by Lance’s made-up name, despite the fact that he had every intention of referring to the animal as Wolf until his real name was revealed) sprawled lazily next to him and Keith was slowly working his fingers through the thick, electric-blue fur. 

The night sky was dark and quiet, speckled with distant constellations. The only sound was the quiet humming from the vent behind him and the occasional whine from Kosmo (Wolf, he corrected himself) when Keith stopped petting him. The atmosphere was peaceful, and while it didn’t solve Keith’s problems, it did help to calm the hurricane of his thoughts, just a bit. 

The door to the roof creaked open, and Keith knew without even looking that it was Shiro. He would have recognized that steady, even tread anywhere, on any planet. 

As Shiro settled beside him, Keith searched his stomach for that tight, anxious feeling that arose whenever he contemplated the question of whether he would stay or go. It was still there, and it curled a little tighter in his gut as he wondered if this was the moment he’d been waiting for — when Shiro would quietly tell him that he appreciated his efforts, but thought that the team would be better off without him.

“Nice night,” Shiro commented. 

Keith breathed in. Felt the air fill his lungs, pressing against his ribs. It didn’t hurt anymore, but he knew not to push it. He held the air in for a moment, then breathed it out. No pain. 

“Uh-huh.”

“Thinking about how different it looks from Earth?”

Keith shrugged. “I suppose.”

The truth was that the starry sky had been reminding him of his year alone in the desert. Not the bad parts of it, either. Not of the emptiness that came with learning Shiro was gone, the red-hot anger at the Garrison for trying to cover it up, or the despair of knowing that he was again alone in the world. Instead, he was reminded of the utter peace he’d found in the desert. Because for all the other things the desert had been for him, it had also been a place where he was free from anyone’s expectations. A place where there was no one to worry about letting down. 

“Can I ask you a question?” Shiro asked. 

Keith looked at him warily, his mind instantly jumping to all the unpleasant possibilities that could be waiting behind that question. “I guess.”

Shiro reached over and gave Kosmo a few scratches behind the ears. His voice was careful when he spoke. “Are you ever afraid of me?”

Of all the questions Keith had been expecting, that hadn’t even remotely been on the list. He almost jerked back, startled. “What? No, of course not!”

“Are you sure?” Shiro pressed. “Not even a little bit? Because I would…I would understand if you were. I think it would only be natural, considering.”

The question was absurd, and the answer was _no, absolutely not_. But Shiro was looking at him so earnestly that Keith paused. It couldn’t be an easy thing to ask, and the least Keith could do was take it seriously. 

“I mean, what happened _sucked_ ,” Keith said, stumbling as he haltingly tried to explain himself. “I’m not gonna say it didn’t. Sometimes I have these dreams…or, or sometimes I’ll think about _him_. Haggar’s puppet. And it’s not…it’s not great. But I’m not scared of you, Shiro. Not ever. I told you before. What happened wasn’t you. I know you would never hurt me.”

Shiro let out a puff of air in something that sounded like a huffed laugh, or maybe a sigh. He nodded, though, and seemed satisfied with Keith’s answer. 

And Keith knew that he probably shouldn’t have asked what he asked next. It was entirely out of line, but something about the dark around them, and the fact that Shiro has already opened the atmosphere made it seem less strange. “Are you…ever afraid of yourself?”

Shiro didn’t answer for a long time. He just kept scratching Kosmo (dammit, dammit, that was _not_ his name) and gazing up at the stars. The silence stretched on for so long that Keith made up his mind to change the subject and pretend he’d never asked. He was just scrambling for a new topic when Shiro finally spoke. 

“You know,” he said at last. “I think I’ve been a little afraid of myself since the day I first set foot in Zarkon’s arena. I think that was the first time it occurred to me that there might be a monster inside me. And to be honest, I think I've been living in that fear ever since."

“But you’re not,” Keith insisted. “You…you know that, right? You’re the best person I know, Shiro. You’re…you’re…” dammit, why was talking so hard? He scrubbed a hand quickly across his eyes to swipe away the tears that seemed determined to leak out. 

“I know that, in a way,” Shiro said, graciously ignoring his leaky eyes. “I do. But some days are harder than others, when it comes to remembering.”

“Then I’ll remind you,” Keith said stubbornly. 

Shiro looked at him then, a smile quirking at the corners of his mouth. “Oh yeah? How are you gonna do that if you’re off with the Blades?”

 _Shit_. Keith had stepped right into that one without even seeing it. He tried to recover himself. 

“It’s not…not that I want to go back,” he tried to explain. “But now that you’re here, I just think it’s better for everyone if you lead. And since there are only five lions, it only makes sense —”

“Keith, you're a part of Voltron,” Shiro said simply. “You're part of the team.”

“You don’t understand. It isn’t that simple. I can’t just —”

“Hey, who said I was finished?” Shiro cut him off, half-scolding, half-amused. “Listen to me. All that’s true. We do need you on the team. But have you ever thought about what you need, Keith? Have you ever asked yourself what you even want?”

Keith stared at Shiro. He was asking what Keith wanted? Why did that matter? It wasn’t about what he wanted, and it never had been. In his experience, you got what you got, and what you want didn’t matter. The universe had never asked him what he wanted. 

Mouth dry, he swallowed. “I don’t…I’m not sure…”

Shiro shrugged, still looking at him. “It’s just a question. No one’s going to force you to answer it. But it’s your life, and you should be the one to decide. Do you want to go back with the Blades? Or do you want to come with Voltron? Whatever you decide, I promise I’ll support you. And I know the others will as well.”

It was like Keith’s mind had stuttered to an absolute halt. Because it wasn’t that simple, and he _knew_ that. But somehow, against his will, Shiro’s words made their way into his brain and, once they rooted themselves there, they demanded to be answered. They grew in his mind, pushing everything else out as they demanded to be heard. And for just that moment, everything else vanished. The fear was gone. The wariness, anxiety, and anger were gone. The endless pressure to never let anyone down was gone. All that was left was the question he had never dared ask himself, because he knew the answer would always be out of his reach. 

_What do you want?_

The answer wasn’t hard to find. It was easy, so absurdly easy, that he imagined it had been waiting there all along, locked behind a steel door in his mind and kept carefully out of sight. But now, there it was. 

Could it really be that simple? Wasn’t it stupid to dare hope for things he couldn’t have? Wishing and hoping, those were things for kids who hadn't grown up in the harsh and unyielding desert, who'd grown up adored by both parents, and who didn't have fire racing through their veins instead of blood.

Then Kosmo shifted next to him, stretching and turning himself around so that his head lay in Keith’s lap, conveniently positioned for scratches. 

And that was when it occurred to Keith.

He was sitting on the roof of a rebel outpost in deep space, light-years from the planet of his birth, with a cosmic, teleporting wolf in his lap. 

He was fighting in the midst of a war that was thousands of years old, fighting against aliens older than most civilizations on Earth. 

He flew a giant, semi-sentient spaceship shaped like a lion, and he had alien blood in his veins. 

He had met his mom out here in the impossible vastness of space and he had lived two years with her on a space whale in a quantum abyss where time ran in loops, spirals, and circles. 

He had watched his best friend’s consciousness being pulled out of the Black Lion and re-planted in a clone body. 

He had fought aliens, been lost in the vacuum of space, flown past black holes and witnessed things most people on Earth had never even dreamed of. 

Nothing he’d learned about what life was supposed to be like seemed to hold water, anymore. The universe, it turned out, was vast and mighty and terrifying and miraculous. Which meant that, just perhaps, there was room for even the most absurd of possibilities. Even the possibility of getting the things you hardly dared hope for. 

He looked up to meet Shiro’s eyes. He didn't look away. “I...I want to be a pilot. I want to head to Earth with you guys. And I want to be part of Voltron again.”

The smile that spread across Shiro’s face was one that seemed to lift years off his tired face. He reached over, still grinning, and tugged Keith into an awkward, one-armed side hug. “Yeah?”

Keith’s voice was muffled as he buried his head into Shiro’s shoulder. “Yeah. I want…I think I want to try again. At leading Voltron. If…if…I mean…”

“Are you sure?”

Keith nodded, pulling away so he could look Shiro in the eye again as he answered. "Yeah. I'm sure."

Shiro reached out and messed up Keith's hair, just like he had years ago at the Garrison. "All right, then." 

And because he was Shiro, he made it sound like the simplest, easiest thing in the world.

Keith looked up at the stars again, so different from the familiar ones that had kept him company in the desert for that long, lonely year. He remembered that feeling of stillness he’d found, there. How relieved he’d been that there was no one else to let down. Because he’d already let them all down, and there was no one left to disappoint. 

Now, under different stars, he felt a similar kind of relief. Because again, he’d already let everyone down. But somehow, they'd refused to let that be the end of the story. They'd picked him up, stood him on his feet again, and let him try again. And here, for the second time in his life, he found that there was no one left to disappoint. Because he’d already done everything it would take to disappoint them, and they hadn’t cared. 

If they could trust Keith that deeply and completely, then it was Keith's turn to trust them in return. He was ready. It was time. He didn’t have to be afraid. It was time to tell the truth — the words he hadn't known how to say since that awful day when he'd thought he'd thought his life was ending.

He breathed in, filling his lungs with trust. He was part of a team. They had his back, and he had theirs. He let this knowledge fill his lungs, sinking deep into his bones and seeping into his bloodstream. And then he breathed out, releasing a few more ounces of distrust and fear. It wouldn’t all come out at once. He knew that. It would take years, probably. Years of stumbling, falling, and trying again. But it was a start. 

Breathe in. 

Breathe out. 

Repeat.

And there, under the watchful eyes of the dark and distant stars, he opened his mouth and told Shiro the story of what had happened at Naxzela.

-The End-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, I have been absolutely BLOWN AWAY by all the love this story has received. Thank you so much to everyone who has read, shared, liked, kudos-ed and commented. I see you all and I just want to thank you all for your participation! It means so much and makes me so happy to see people enjoying my story!
> 
> Leave me a final comment and let me know what you thought? :)
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> I can't wait to share more stories with you. In the meantime, come hang out with me on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/indigogoblue) if you like!
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> Thanks again, and so much love to you all <3 <3 <3


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